


Divergence

by Stealth_Noodle



Category: Chrono Trigger
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Mad Science, Not Chrono Cross Compliant, Post-Canon, SNES Canon, Time Travel, Wordcount: Over 50.000
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-01-08
Updated: 2011-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 84,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealth_Noodle/pseuds/Stealth_Noodle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year after the defeat of Lavos, Lucca discovers that not all of the changes she and her friends made to history were beneficial. And trying to set things right is going to cost her more than she ever imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer**: Chrono Trigger and all its attendant goodies belong to Square-Enix. I'm just playing in their sandbox.
> 
> **Author's Note**: This fic is based solely on Chrono Trigger and isn't meant to fit into the continuity of Chrono Cross (or Radical Dreamers, for that matter). But for the sake of consistency, I borrowed a few appellations from the sequelnamely, "Zenan" as the name for the continent with Guardia and Porre on it and "Ashtear" as Lucca's surname. I may end up working in a few other homages as I go along, too.

**Disclaimer**: Chrono Trigger and all its attendant goodies belong to Square-Enix. I'm just playing in their sandbox.

**Author's Note**: This fic is based solely on Chrono Trigger and isn't meant to fit into the continuity of Chrono Cross (or Radical Dreamers, for that matter). But for the sake of consistency, I borrowed a few appellations from the sequel—namely, "Zenan" as the name for the continent with Guardia and Porre on it and "Ashtear" as Lucca's surname. I may end up working in a few other homages as I go along, too.

 

"Do you ever wonder how everything happened without us?"

Lucca set down her screwdriver and looked up from her latest robot. Marle had been chattering intermittently for the past hour or so, providing a not-unpleasant background hum while Lucca worked, and this was was the first question she'd asked that seemed to require an answer. Pushing her glasses up, Lucca shrugged and said, "Define 'everything.'"

A snore answered her from the area near the grandfather clock. That had been Crono's napping spot for as long as Lucca had known him, and the two of them had passed countless afternoons like this, talking only when Crono woke to eat or be her guinea pig. It was an easy, comfortable arrangement, smooth and worn like a favorite pair of gloves, and the only change now was the presence of Marle perched backwards on a chair. Perhaps that made her some kind of embroidery on the gloves. Lucca had never been good with metaphors.

Drumming her fingers on the desk, Marle said, "Well, like when we all met and ended up back in the Middle Ages. Who was supposed to save Leene before?"

"Just some soldiers, I think," Lucca replied, turning her attention back to her uncooperative invention. The Coffee Mate 2300 was supposed to ferry Lucca's empty mug to the kitchen, fill it, and return with a piping hot serving of energy, but all it had managed to do so far was stack mugs upside-down in the doorway. It was more a piece of performance art than a productivity aid.

Marle shook her head. "Okay, maybe that's a bad example. But what about when we helped Ayla beat the Reptites? I mean, could she really have saved Kino and taken down the whole fortress by herself?"

Well, she'd found at least part of the problem. Lucca appeared to have cross-wired a few things, which was precisely why she needed a steady supply of coffee when she worked. "She must have," Lucca pointed out, beginning carefully to separate the wires. "Otherwise, where'd you come from?"

Marle giggled. "Okay, you got me there. But I can't really remember how history went without us in it. It's like..." She paused. "It's like I know I learned about it, but I don't remember what it was."

Lucca grinned. "That's because you didn't actually pay attention to your lessons, Princess."

Feigning offense, Marle bounced an eraser off Lucca's helmet. "That's kind of true," she said, "but it's still freaky. Like all the old memories are being—"

"Overwritten?" Lucca suggested. "When you change the past, I guess you have to change, too." Certain that all the wires were in order, she closed the hatch in the robot's back. "I know what you mean, though. I tried a while ago to remember what it was like walking through the desert where the forest is now, and everything's fuzzy. Like it's just something I read about."

Marle shivered. "Creepy, creepy, creepy," she said, hopping off the chair and walking over to see how Lucca was faring with her invention. "Can he get through the door now?"

The robot's other quirk was its difficulty in navigating the route from desk to kitchen, part of which was due to the amount of floor clutter that had to be avoided on the way. No doubt it would have been easier to build a permanent track for it, but Lucca's mother would have none of that in her home. "We'll find out," Lucca said, giving the robot an affectionate pat as she stood. The Coffee Mate 2300 was just tall enough to reach the kitchen counter, putting its head at a perfect patting altitude, as Marle had been the first to note.

"Okay, then," Lucca said in her Voice of Accomplishment, "could you wake up Crono? I don't want him to miss science at its finest."

Marle giggled with vicarious excitement and shook her boyfriend's arm. He yawned and stretched as he got to his feet, asking, "Is it gonna work this time?"

Lucca grinned. "Of course! Look at who made it!" With a triumphant flourish, she flipped the little black switch on the robot's side and stood back.

The Coffee Mate 2300 whirred to life, rolling forward to where Lucca had left an empty mug on the floor. One of its mechanical arms angled down to retrieve its quarry, then rose to hold it overhead. Beeping, the robot made a three-point turn toward the kitchen and wheeled its way forward. Lucca's grin broadened as she cracked her knuckles in anticipation of victory.

From the kitchen came the sounds of liquid being poured. And poured. When the sounds didn't stop, the three teenagers investigated and found the Coffee Mate 2300 emptying an entire pot of coffee over an upturned mug.

Lucca gave her invention a baleful look as Crono and Marle laughed.

"Back to the drawing board," she muttered, turning off the robot as the last of the coffee puddled on the floor. Crono carefully pried the pot from the mechanical hands and set it back on the counter as Marle wiped up the spill.

"Well, you're getting closer," Marle said brightly, following Lucca back into the living room. "Remember when he crashed into the china cabinet and your mom looked like she was going to strangle us?"

Lucca unscrewed the robot's hatch with a little more force than was necessary. "How could I forget?"

Apparently sensing that this was the wrong line for the conversation to take, Marle wandered over to the bookshelf as Crono settled back into his corner and began snoring again. No one could fall asleep as quickly as Crono. It was almost a talent.

Lucca glared at the mechanical guts before her, then sighed and got back to work.

"_A Comprehensive History of Zenan Continent_," Marle read aloud, pulling one of the few non-scientific books from the collection. The three of them had thumbed through it in the weeks after their adventure, looking for mentions of themselves and their friends, but their enthusiasm had waned when the volume proved to be dense, dry, and unillustrated. Despite Lucca's intentions to buy other history books, she had never gotten around to it. She felt almost guilty reading them, as if she were spying.

For a while, the only sounds in the room were pages turning, metal scraping, and Crono snoring. Perhaps not even Marle could provide a running commentary on _A Comprehensive History of the Zenan Continent._ The tome was less a collection of facts than a rambling discourse on the author's theory of history.

"Hey, Crono," Marle said suddenly. He blinked his way back to consciousness and ambled over to the desk where she was flipping through the book. "Lucca, you too," she added. "I can't believe we missed this before!"

"I can," Lucca said. "No one can get through more than a page of that thing without passing out." A little reluctantly, she set down her tools and made her way over the desk. Marle's finger was planted in the center of a page, so Lucca twisted her head around to read the words.

"The medieval period was an era rich in folklore and superstition, precious little of it rooted in anything so solid as physical evidence, but such is the character of an age as yet untouched by industrialization," began the text. Lucca skimmed, stopping when a familiar name caught her eye: "Perhaps the most curious case is that of the village of Sandorino, the destruction of which in 758 AD achieved near-mythic status through the influence of rumor. Although an official investigation counted the disaster as nothing more than a tragic accident, popular sentiment inclined more to tales of ghostly apparitions and supernatural flames, perhaps in an effort to explain why none of the population survived to bear witness. Ballads on the subject were widely performed for decades after the fact, only slowly losing favor as new 'mysteries' arose in the form of pre-industrial advancements."

Crono looked up sharply. "No, I remember this one," he said. "Sandorino was evacuated after a landslide."

"That was before we saved the forest," Lucca pointed out.

Marle looked horror-struck. "You mean _we_ caused this?"

As Crono tried to calm his girlfriend, Lucca pursed her lips and tried to remember. On the one hand, she half-recalled passing notes to Crono during their history classes as the teacher tried to make an ecological point about Sandorino. It wasn't that exciting, really; the encroaching desert had turned the Denadoro Mountains into a dangerous region for mudslides, and after an usually rainy spring in the early eighth century ended with part of the village buried, Sandorino had been abandoned by royal decree. But there was another memory competing for space, a strong impression that she and Crono had been passing those notes while the teacher lectured about the mysterious fire that killed everyone in the town one night, residents and travelers alike. She also remembered thinking that all those stories about it were bunk and that someone's cow had probably kicked over a lantern.

There had been only a handful of deaths in the landslide, mostly people living on the northeastern outskirts who had no warning that several tons of mud were about to crash down on them. The fire was another matter entirely.

"We have to fix it!" Marle's palms smacked against the desk. "All those people—it's horrible!"

Crono nodded. "But how?"

Noticing that they were both giving her expectant looks, Lucca shook her head. "Remember how the eras work, guys? I can't get us back to 758 AD. Unless you want to go back to 601 and wait around, we're out of—" She cut herself off as realization struck. "Wait! Robo's still—"

"Planting the forest," Crono finished, looking quite pleased with himself for catching her train of thought.

Marle cheered. "You're a genius, Lucca!" she said, catching her friend up in a bone-crushing hug. Lucca wriggled out of it.

"Look, we don't know for sure that this is gonna work," she said, recomposing herself. But Marle was already heading for the door, Crono in tow.

"Epoch's still behind the square, right?" he called over his shoulder.

Lucca interposed herself between her friends and the door. "Hang on, guys. We don't know if this is going to work. We don't even know if—"

Crono had always been quick to figure out what was bothering her. "Of course he'll be there," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I don't get how it works, either, but it does."

Marle glanced from one friend to the other until comprehension lit her face. "Oh..."

Gently brushing off Crono's hand, Lucca said, "You guys don't mind if I go alone, do you? I mean, the Epoch hasn't run in a while, and I may need to spend some quality time with the engines..."

Ever since the near-disaster involved in retrieving Crono's mother from the prehistoric era, the three had agreed (at Lucca's insistence) to an "emergencies only" rule regarding use of the Epoch. So far nothing had been mutually approved as an emergency, and the time machine had remained peacefully hidden in the forest behind Leene Square. Lucca had never worked up the nerve to invent a critical reason to interfere in the future.

"Not at all." Marle beamed at her. "Enjoy your reunion."

Lucca paused as her hand closed around the doorknob. "This might not work, you know."

Crono clapped her on the back. "Then we'll think of something else. Go see Robo."

A smile flickered over Lucca's face as she left the house, pausing only to thank her friends.

 

Not much had changed. Of course, there were probably sentries posted around the kingdom to keep an eye out for Mystic guerillas, but Lucca was more concerned with flying stealithy to Fiona's field than watching Guardia deal with post-war security. Crono and Marle wouldn't have been concerned with who saw the Epoch streaking through the sky, but Lucca felt a certain paranoia about interfering with history now that the future was safe. Such small actions created such big ripples.

_Says the girl who's trying to save an entire village,_ she thought wryly. But if she'd caused the problem in the first place...

A flash of gold caught her eye as she cleared the Denadoro Mountains. Palms sweating, she maneuvered the Epoch over an area that didn't appear to be cultivated yet and landed, then popped open the hatch and climbed out.

"Robo!" she called, running to him. As he straightened up from working on a sapling, she launched herself at him in a hug that would have tackled a human being. "I missed you," she said before he could respond, then broke the embrace and grinned. Timeline be damned. This was worth it.

"Lucca!" Robo's joints clinked as he bowed. "It is good to see you again. Have you been well?" When she nodded, the bulbs of his eyes dimmed and relit twice, indicating a puzzled blink. "Is something wrong? Data indicates that you planned to pick me up in three hundred and ninety-nine years."

She'd left enough paradoxes behind her in her adventures without creating a new one in Robo's memory banks. With what she hoped was a casual smile, Lucca said, "I did. Or will, from your end of it. So how've you been holding up?"

Robo rotated the top half of his head to indicate the seedlings peeking out from the ground around him. "I recently transplanted these from their pots. It will take many years before this forest will be able to sustain itself, but my power supply should last long enough to see them on their way."

Lucca nodded and took a deep breath. "Can I ask you for a favor?"

"Certainly. What is your request, Lucca?"

She hesitated for a moment, watching the tiny saplings tremble in the breeze. "Robo," she said at last, "how long will your power supply last before you have to go on stand-by?"

Something in him whirred. "Precisely, or would you prefer an estimate?"

"A year is fine."

Robo bowed slightly, the closest he could come to nodding. "I have enough reserves to last me until 716. It is my estimate that this will be sufficient time for the forest to establish itself."

The beginnings of panic gnawed at Lucca, but she pushed them down as she asked, "And if I could repower you now?"

He blinked again. "You made sure I was fully powered before letting me stay here. If you repower me now, I will have enough reserves to last until 717."

"I see." She suddenly felt cold, despite the summer sun.

Robo looked as quizzical as anything without facial expressions could. "Lucca, did you not have a favor to ask me?"

She bit her lower lip. Why worry him about it? With a smile that she hoped covered up any other emotions, she said, "I just want you to promise not to tell the future me that I visited. I don't want to set up a paradox or anything."

"Of course, Lucca."

When the silence became awkward (for her, if not for him), she took a step back towards the Epoch and stared at the ground. "Robo, I..."

_I want to stay and talk, but I have to get back to Crono and Marle and prevent a tragedy. I want to come back here again and again and help you plant this forest. I want to know there's a future you who remembers me._

She was terrible at good-byes. Although the presence of Robo in the Middle Ages and in her memories seemed proof enough that the new future had a place for him, she still had moments when she wondered if the Robo she had sent back through the Gate had vanished into impossibility. Of course, their entire journey was built on paradoxes, and things seemed to be holding up well enough, but she'd never found the courage to visit the new future. She didn't think she could handle finding a Prometheus who was never Robo.

But why was she treating this as a good-bye? Maybe if she kept herself out of sight of everyone else in this era, it wouldn't hurt if she visited a few more times. And she could see Frog again, too, as long as she was in the area. She just had to be careful not to say anything to Robo that might affect the fight against Lavos. If that was awkward, well, what about her life wasn't awkward most of the time?

She wondered briefly if Frog ever came by to see Robo. If such meetings occurred, they obviously weren't breaking history. Maybe it was time to let go of the paranoia and visit her friends every now and then. Crono and Marle wouldn't be hard to convince of that idea, at least.

Letting the idea settle in, she gave Robo the brightest grin she could manage, waved, and said, "I'll come back to see you again soon! Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

"Lucca, I am not certain what that command means."

Her only reply was a laugh, and she hopped back into the time machine, setting the dial for her home era as Robo waved at her. As she felt the Epoch jump out of time, she let her smile melt away, then sank back in the driver's seat and sighed heavily. This was a good time for sighing, she felt.

Of course she didn't regret visiting Robo. If anything, she regretted not visiting earlier, a decision she admitted had as much to do with the fear that somehow, impossibly, he wouldn't be there as with her concern for keeping the timeline intact. Seeing him rolled a boulder off of her heart, and this, at least, qualified as good news.

But she still had to deal with the bad news. Sandorino was doomed.

There had to be another way to work things out. If the Epoch stayed in one piece, she could, theoretically, repower Robo in forty or so years, but that plan seemed uncertain at best. While she could make a number of small repairs to the Epoch, so much of the time machine was based on the life's work of a certified mad genius that even she couldn't grasp everything that was going on under the hood. But there was no way to travel to a time that wasn't already an era...

Except for that Red Gate.

It had bothered her ever since the initial euphoria of saving her mother's legs had worn off. Why her? Why that moment? Regardless of whether Lavos was responsible for the other Gates, the alien parasite had obviously had nothing to do with letting Lucca correct one of her life's regrets.

The Entity whose existence Robo had proposed seemed a likely candidate. If Lucca had to admit the possibility that fuzzy, wish-fulfilling, spiritual mumbo-jumbo had any merit, she might as well admit the possibility that the planet itself, the thing suffering most from the parasite, could form enough of a will to meddle in history. And if such an entity had wished to reward Robo for bringing life back into a desert, it might have sensed that what he wanted most was to make his friend Lucca happy. Surely a planet would be able to muster the energy needed to dig tunnels through time.

Well, it wasn't _that_ much more ridiculous than being able to shoot fire from her hands.

Lucca pulled herself out of her musings when she realized that the Epoch had been hovering over the forest for some time now. Annoyed at her own absent-mindedness, she steered the time machine back to its hiding place, disembarked, and paused. _Oh, what the heck?_

Feeling very silly, she rested a hand on the nearest tree and said, "Um, Entity? About that thing with my mother... thanks." She paused. "Listen, you probably know we killed Lavos. Assuming you exist outside of time, that is, which I guess you'd have to do to be able to manipulate Gates. Assuming you exist at all. So if you do, I've got another favor to ask. I want to save Sandorino."

There was no reply. Well, what had she expected? Annoyed at her bout of childishness, Lucca started to walk back to her house, only to change her mind and return to Leene Square. She didn't want to break the bad news to Crono and Marle just yet. Not until she had a back-up plan.

Leaning back against the supports for Nadia's Bell, she cupped her chin in her hand and settled in to think.

 

_Way to be brave, Lucca,_ she thought, trudging home after dark. Crono and Marle would probably have assumed she'd decided to spend the night in the Middle Ages, so she had an evening to think of something. It didn't do for Lucca the Great to be caught without an idea.

The house was quiet when she let herself in and slipped upstairs to her room. No sense in waking her parents; they had long since grown used to her coming and going at all hours, and they tended to trust that she could take care of herself. Marle had expressed more than a little jealousy over this arrangement.

Closing the door to her room, Lucca took off her helmet and sat down at her desk, brushing away a stack of books to make a workspace. She flipped on her lamp, took out a fresh sheet of paper, and began to gnaw thoughtfully on one of her pens. Dinner could wait.

No matter how much she'd studied it, time travel gave her a headache. It wasn't like engineering, where everything lined up in neat equations and cause-and-effect came down to the inviolable physical laws. History was a mess of people doing stupid things for even stupider reasons, and even the best predictions fell apart in the face of human behavior.

The idea she was currently mulling over, that of entrusting orders to evacuate Sandorino before 758 to King Guardia XXI, had the disadvantage of depending on a long chain of people to pass on and obey seemingly baseless commands. She didn't see her plan making it past a generation.

For the sake of completion, she wrote, "Orders for old king?" and drew a heavy black line through it. After tapping the pen against her chin for a while, she added, "Teach modern firefighting in 601?" That earned a double strikethrough.

The ideas were not flowing. With an impatient sigh, Lucca leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. _Guess a nap couldn't hurt..._

Her ears pricked. Lucca couldn't tell if she'd fallen asleep or only drifted for a while, but she was definitely awake now. And there was definitely a noise coming from downstairs, a tiny crackling of energy that she had to strain to hear. Actually, it was less like hearing than feeling, but Lucca was wary of that line of thought.

This disturbance was familiar, though. A year ago, it had led her into the darkness of the forest, where a spherical rip in space and time had hung patiently in the air.

Lucca scarcely remembered to grab her helmet before she rushed downstairs.

And there it was, hovering like an electric eye in the center of the kitchen. Blue light flickered over the walls and gleamed from the sink and refrigerator. Lucca had to stop to catch her breath.

"Well, I'll be damned," she said at last, taking a hesitant step forward. "Er, thanks. Entity. Planet. Whoever you are." She made an awkward attempt to bow. "Uh, give me just a minute, okay?"

Dashing back to her room, she pulled her old Gate Key out of her trunk, along with the Wondershot. It never hurt to be prepared, after all. Holstering her gun, she ran back downstairs and faced the Gate, feeling the energy pulse over her.

No sense delaying. Gritting her teeth, Lucca raised the Gate Key and stepped into the scarlet vortex.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to **Xyn** for catching my lapse in proofreading.

She hit the ground on her knees, a little dizzy from the time travel. After so long with the Epoch, Lucca had almost forgotten what a rush the Gates were. She wasn't certain that she'd missed it.

Getting to her feet, she glanced around and found herself in a large clearing, the half-moon shining down overhead. Ahead, the lights of civilization glowed through the gaps in the trees. There could be little doubt which civilization it was.

Lucca took off at a run, wondering how long she had before the fire broke out. If the time frame of the last Red Gate was any indication, the answer was "not long."

Wheezing and clutching her side, Lucca came to a stop against the wall of an outlying shed and tried to catch her breath. Apparently she'd gotten a bit out of shape since the battle against Lavos. Not that a genius needed to be athletic, but it was embarrassing.

There'd be time to worry about that later, though. She sent her mind racing through parallel memories, hoping to find a clue hidden in a half-attended history lesson. Of course, there hadn't been any witnesses, so the odds of her finding an answer down that road were slim.

But something wasn't right here. Farther along in the town, there were lights shining in several windows, indicating that a percentage of the populace was still up. Surely those people would have been able to run away before a fire claimed them. While Sandorino wasn't as sprawling as, say, Porre, there were enough homes spaced far enough apart that a normal blaze shouldn't have been able to kill everyone, especially those who were awake enough to see what was happening. It was too much to ascribe to an accident. It was almost too much to ascribe to arson.

"But I heard one of our kind is living here," came a raspy voice from the forest.

Lucca started, then dove around the side of the shed. Easing the Wondershot out of its holster, she peered around the corner and waited for the speaker to reveal himself.

"Traitor," grunted another voice. Something about it was vaguely and unpleasantly familiar. "No one who grovels for peace with the humans is a true Mystic."

There was a chorus of agreement, suggesting more a dozen figures were hiding in the shadows. Lucca cursed herself for neglecting to bring bombs.

"Is everyone clear on the plan?" continued the voice.

"Yes, Sir Ozzie!"

Lucca let out an annoyed sigh. _Why is it always an Ozzie?_

Ozzie went on, barely keeping his voice low enough to avoid alerting the village, "Tonight we leave a message the humans cannot ignore. Tonight, the Mystics rise again!" He was answered with muffled cheering.

That was interesting. Either they'd completely botched their "message," or someone in the Guardia investigation hadn't wanted the Mystic uprising to become public knowledge. Lucca's innate distrust of politicians led her to suspect the latter.

"Enough!" barked Ozzie. "Secure the perimeter!"

If she didn't make her move now, Lucca would have to contend with a town surrounded by enemies. She took a breath to steady her nerves, then angled herself around the corner and aimed her gun in the direction of the voices.

"Wake up!" she screamed. "You're under attack!" Before she'd finished speaking, she'd already fired a shot into the darkness and heard an inhuman shriek.

The windows of the houses nearest her lit up. Encouraged, she fired another round and ducked back behind the shed. Confusion was her ally now, but it wouldn't take long for Ozzie's minions to follow the blasts back to her. And then where could she run?

If the monsters chased her into the town itself, there would be bloodshed, and at least some of it would be on the part of the villagers. But if she drew the Mystics _away..._

Lucca sent one more blast into the trees before scampering into the forest. If his ancestor was any indication, this Ozzie would be hot for revenge as long as he had backup. And all that she needed was enough open space to use her fire magic.

"It went this way! Catch it! Catch it, you fools!"

As gratifying as it was to know that she'd guessed correctly, Lucca wasn't keen on being called an "it." And by the time she'd sprinted into the clearing with the Gate, the stitch in her side had only added to her annoyance. This Ozzie was asking for it.

An assortment of shadows reached the edge of the clearing. Lucca didn't get a good look at the Mystics who first charged her, and they weren't identifiable after her magic roared over them. The monsters who had been close enough to see the devastation wisely hung back in the trees, and the ones behind them took the hint.

Except for Ozzie. This particular branch of the family tree didn't seem to have inherited the cowardice gene; he broke through the line of Mystics in front of him and rushed into the clearing at top speed, bellowing, "You filthy human pest!"

Times like these made Lucca appreciate having a Sun Stone-powered weapon. With the flick of a switch, she went from being charged by a ghostly streak in the darkness to being charged by an illuminated target. Her blast halted Ozzie and threw him into a frenzied shrieking.

The shot also scattered the Mystics who were watching from the cover of the trees. "Looks like you should have stuck with the family tradition," Lucca remarked, drawing a bead on Ozzie as he began to cast a spell. But this time he spun aside before she fired, and Lucca barely dodged a blast of ice magic.

Without giving her time to recover, Ozzie sent a barrage of ice chunks into the night air. Lucca ran for cover, but one of the missiles grazed her thigh, breaking her balance and landing her face-down in the grass. Another missed her head by inches.

Panting, she pushed herself up in time to see Ozzie preparing another round of magic. She threw a weak fire spell at him, doing little harm but giving her a chance to get to her feet. Ozzie eyed Lucca warily.

"How is it a piece of human filth uses magic?" he demanded.

She ignored the bait. Taunting had nearly gotten her killed a few seconds ago, so it was clearly time to shut up and fight. While Ozzie was puzzling over her ability to throw little flames, Lucca was building up much bigger ones.

Flare took him completely off-guard.

"Like that," she said, once she was certain the magic had done its job. Even as the air thickened with the smell of roast Ozzie, she fired a final blast from her gun into the Mystic's remains. There was a lot to be said for thoroughness.

In the near distance, Sandorino had bloomed into a cluster of lights. Even if the surviving Mystics made another attempt on the village tonight, they wouldn't get very far.

Satisfied, she holstered the Wondershot and let herself back through the Gate. That the Mystics hadn't seemed aware of the glowing portal made her certain that she'd been given something special. Another gift.

As she picked herself up off the floor of the now-dark kitchen, she smiled at whatever force happened to be listening. "Thanks," she said before heading back to her bedroom.

Thoughts of how she'd relate the story to Crono and Marle whirled giddily around her brain as she got ready for bed. At first she was worried she'd have too much of an adrenaline rush to sleep, but her body had other ideas. She was out before she'd finished pulling up the covers.

 

An usually high concentration of daylight streamed in through her window. Blinking, Lucca fumbled her glasses onto her face and read the clock on her desk. It was almost noon.

She let out a low whistle as she stretched. Usually, her mother liked to see that everyone was up and about by eight o'clock, as a means of discouraging late-night inventing sessions. Lucca had learned long ago that the best defense in those cases was to ask Crono to put her up for the night, since his mother didn't see anything wrong with a growing teenager sleeping until lunch.

Well, long ago in the newer set of memories.

Lucca felt a bit uncomfortable as she dug for clean clothing on her floor. As much as she dreaded being dragged out of bed on a few hours' sleep, she liked the reassurance that her mother was really, permanently all right. When Lara had decided to let her have a late lie-in a few months ago, Lucca had all but panicked until she'd found her mother cheerily cleaning the living room curtains. Even now, a little break in the routine made her stomach knot up.

But there wasn't time for that. She needed to let her friends know that Sandorino had been single-handedly saved by the inimitable Lucca the Great. Maybe she wouldn't phrase it quite that way, but there was no harm in entertaining a few heroic delusions in the privacy of her own head. It was just a pity there was no way to let Sandorino give her a plaque.

In the world outside her imagination, clean clothing was becoming a difficult prospect. She must have been neglecting her laundry even more than usual lately. At last Lucca settled for the least dirty outfit and headed downstairs.

Her mother wasn't there.

Great. Now Lucca would be worried until she saw that everything was still all right. Nervous irritation carried her into the empty kitchen, then up to her mother's bedroom.

"_There_ you are," Lucca said in a mixture of annoyance and relief. Her mother was seated by the window, staring out over the yard. "And, uh, good morning," she added.

"Good morning." Lara's voice was distant, in that terrible, empty way it hadn't been since—

The thought tangled and died. Lucca's gaze had just fallen on her mother's legs, and not even the long skirt could hide that they were twisted and atrophied.

Lucca staggered back as if she'd been kicked. "What the hell is going on?"

"Lucca, _language_." Even the voice was broken.

"No!" Her scream startled Lara, but Lucca couldn't stop the words from rushing out: "This is wrong! I fixed it! Get up, Mom! Get _up_!" Ignoring her mother's frightened protests, Lucca grabbed Lara's arms and tried to pull her to her to feet. "You can walk! I fixed this! Get up!"

Taban's voice suddenly carried across the room: "Lucca, what on earth are you doing?"

She let go of her mother and turned, tears blurring her vision. Scarcely able to keep the sobs out of her voice, she said, "You don't get it, Dad. This is _wrong._ I fixed it. Why is Mom—" Then her control broke, and she cried as her father embraced her.

"I know it's hard sometimes, Lucca," he soothed. "But it'll be all right. Your mother and I are here for you." Releasing her, he smiled and patted her once on the shoulder. "Let's get you some tea, okay?"

Behind her, Lucca could hear her mother's barely muffled weeping. "No, I think I'm okay now, Dad," she said, fighting keep her voice level. Her stomach was clawing its way up her throat. "I just need to go see Crono for a while."

Taban's eyebrows knitted. "Who?"

She was out the door and across the bridge to Truce before her thoughts caught up with her. _This isn't happening. This isn't happening. This isn't—_

Lucca gave a frustrated cry and shook her head as she ran, trying to clear it. There was no use panicking. Maybe some little ripple in the timestream had changed Crono's name to Roy. Maybe the Entity had revoked her first wish in order to grant her second. Maybe she was having a nightmare, and she'd see Crono with a penguin's head right before she woke up. Hell, maybe she'd fallen asleep at her desk, and everything in the last twelve hours had been part of an especially bizarre REM cycle.

If she could believe that, why was her stomach an icy knot?

Crono's front door loomed in front of her. Biting her lip, she raised a shaking hand and knocked twice.

"Coming!" called an unfamiliar voice. A child's voice. Lucca was still reeling when the door swung open to reveal a little girl in a yellow dress. "Are you here to see Papa?"

An adult woman appeared next, cradling an infant in one arm. "Oh, my," she murmured, the color draining from her face as she saw Lucca. "Do you want something?"

"Where's Crono?" made it past Lucca's lips without checking in at her brain.

The woman made a small, fretful noise and backed away from the doorframe, pulling the little girl with her. "Carl!" she called back into the house. "Go get Taban. I think she's getting violent again!"

"I'm getting _what_?"

Lucca's outburst startled the woman into slamming the door. The muffled clanging of locks filled the air as Lucca stared helplessly at the knob. Somehow, she didn't think that following her impulse to scream and kick the wall would help her case.

 

_Crono's gone._

 

The next thing that registered in her mind was hunching over the nearest bush and heaving. When there was nothing left in her, Lucca collapsed on her back and tried to convince herself that she'd wake up any minute now. She could pretend as long as she didn't pinch herself.

No, she had to be stronger than that. Taking a deep breath, Lucca got to her feet and ran in a daze toward Leene Square, fighting the urge with each step to turn around and dash back to her bed. _Think like a scientist,_ she told herself. _You can work this out if you just _think.

Something had gone wrong. Horribly wrong, even. Somehow, her actions last night had wiped her best friend out of existence, and she had no idea how to fix it. Scratch that. She'd find a way to fix it. That what she did, wasn't it? Fixing things.

Panting, Lucca stopped running long enough to curse at the top of her lungs and kick a tree. She resumed her journey with a sore foot.

What had she done, exactly? She'd killed one of the Ozzie line, but that was only a problem if he hadn't spawned a replacement yet. And even then, his demise shouldn't have had the kind of historic significance that would prevent Crono from being born.

She'd killed some Mystic underlings, too. Surely that wouldn't have left the timestream in chaos.

No, the only event she could see affecting Crono's lineage was the fate of Sandorino itself. Had some villager's death led to his existence? Had she saved a murderer who would later cut off Crono's line? Had she prevented widowhood, remarriage, and a different child?

Lucca's footsteps slowed as she entered Leene's Square. This, at least, looked the same; all the decorations for the Fair had long since been taken down, and the air of celebration had mellowed into a sense that this would be a nice place to a have a picnic. Swallowing the lump in the throat, Lucca made her way to the upper plaza.

The bell was bronze.

But there was no surprise left, not after finding a strange family in her best friend's home. She wasn't going to cry, either. She'd already cried once today, and she was still angry about it. Instead she kicked the bell's supports. Twice.

Foot throbbing, Lucca ran on into the forest behind the square, making for the clearing where she'd left the Epoch. There was no surprise, then, either, when she found only an empty space. Still dazed by the enormity of what she'd done, Lucca wandered back to Leene's Bell and sank down against the base, resting her head in her hands. There was no time now to brood over the "what"; she had to figure out the "why."

Since the landslide had led to Crono as surely as the fire, the ancestor of someone she'd saved must have originally perished there almost half a century earlier. Then the rise of the forest had saved the ancestor but damned the descendant. And last night, apparently, Lucca had removed the last barrier to this person's existence.

But it still didn't fit. If saving Sandorino had erased Crono, wouldn't there be a paradox? Without Crono to help jumpstart their adventure, how would the landslide have been averted? But if the forest wasn't saved and Crono _was_ born, then the forest _would_ be saved and...

Lucca groaned. It had been easier to accept, or at least ignore, the paradox presented by the future, especially since everything seemed to have worked out for the best. This one made her brain throw up its metaphorical arms. Unless some bizarre quirk of history and time travel had grown the forest without their interference, Robo would have to have been there to cultivate the trees.

Maybe Robo _was_ still there.

Her head shot up as footsteps sounded on the cobblestones. Lucca's father was making his way to her with an expression that was half-exasperation and half-pity, and another, more immediate problem asserted itself in her mind.

"Am I insane?" she asked as he reached down a hand to her.

Taban shook his head and pulled her to her feet. "Just because you're not some social butterfly is no reason for anyone to think there's something wrong with you," he said, patting her on the back. "You're a brilliant girl, Lucca. Don't let 'em get you down."

Was she so pathetic that she'd never made any friends without Crono? Lucca sighed as her father continued, "They just don't know what to do with a real genius. Jealousy's all it is."

Wonderful. She was a genuine mad scientist in this reality. There was no telling what she'd done to make the denizens of Truce afraid to let her near their children, but she was willing to bet it had to do with explosions and runaway robots. If she ever saw Crono again, he'd think this was hilarious.

"Let's go home, then, okay?" Taban said. His smile suggested that while he would never doubt his daughter's sanity, he thought it was important to keep from agitating her.

Lucca sighed and followed him. _Get over it,_ she told herself. _Solve the big problem and the little ones will go away, too._

"Hey, Dad," she said as they made their way to the bridge home, "you know the forest north of Porre?"

Taban nodded. "Would you like to go camping there again?"

"Not exactly." His flicker of disappointment made her feel guilty, but she pushed on: "Actually, I was wondering about the shrine."

"Shrine?"

Lucca stopped walking. "Maybe more of a temple," she said weakly as her father turned back to her.

After scratching his head for a moment, he said, "Well, that's an interesting word for those ruins. It just looked like an old house to me, but maybe it used to be part of a nature cult or something. Never really thought about it."

"Ruins," she echoed. Her heart had sunk somewhere past her knees. "Empty ruins?"

"Just half a wall and a chimney." Taban inclined his head. "You feeling okay, sweetie? We went there just a few summers ago."

She'd started walking again so that her brain could occupy itself with things like direction and balance. "I'm fine," she managed. "Just had a little trouble remembering."

So much for finding Robo in her own era. But at least now she knew where to start looking. If there was still a forest, someone or something must have created it back in the Middle Ages. And considering that whatever revived the forest had vanished, she hoped to God it wasn't still Robo.

There wouldn't be a Gate Key in her bedroom anymore, but Lucca was confident that she could build another. Then she'd just have to hope that the Gate had always been at the fairgrounds and was opened, not created, by the fluke with the pendant and the Telepod.

Recalling the incident stung. Without Crono, she would have never met Marle, either. There wouldn't even be a Marle, just a Princess Nadia who never made a friend at the Millennial Fair. Was she lonely, too?

Lucca shook the thought away. The sooner she resolved this mess, the happier everyone would be.

 

Building a new Gate Key was proving a little harder than she'd expected. Of course, Lucca's technological prowess was bound to come through in the end, but her memory was a little fuzzy about some of the particulars. She'd only ever made one Gate Key, after all. It wasn't as if she'd streamlined the process.

As she disassembled yet another piece that didn't seem right, she heard the door ease open, followed by her father's voice: "You doing okay now, Lucca?"

"Yeah," she replied, wracking her brain for a plausible lie about what she was making. "I just had a bad dream last night. I'm fine now."

"Glad to hear it, dear."

The door closed. Lucca blinked and glanced over her shoulder to make sure that her father wasn't still there.

Did she _normally_ lock herself up in her room without a word of explanation? The Taban she'd grown up with would have wanted to know why she wasn't working downstairs, why she hadn't bragged about her latest idea to him yet, and why she thought a nightmare was a good excuse to terrorize the neighbors. She almost would have preferred it if he'd forced his way into the room and demanded answers.

_I'm not even close to Dad,_ she realized, slumping in her seat. _How maladjusted_ am _I_?

It didn't matter. She was going to fix it. Setting her mouth in a stern line, she got back to trying to remember whether the round bits had been strictly necessary.

 

By the time the sun rose, Lucca had a new Gate Key. It wasn't quite as aesthetic as the last one, but she was confident that it would unlock any portal through time. All she needed now was a Gate.

Yawning, Lucca staggered out of her disaster of a bedroom to find coffee, breakfast, and a shower, preferably in that order. If she was going to crash into the brick wall of disappointment, at least she wouldn't feel quite so much like hell when she did.

Halfway down the hall she sniffed herself and changed course for the bathroom.

Taban was cooking breakfast when she wandered into the kitchen, her hair still damp. Lucca grunted something to the order of "Good morning" as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

"Thought I'd make us a treat," her father said as she sat down at the table. "Got sausages, eggs, and a whole basket of blueberries. Here, let me fix you up a plate."

Lucca set down her mug and made a face. "What makes you think I'd want blueberries?"

"Well, you liked them last week." Taban chuckled as he speared a sausage for her.

"Er, just kidding. " She laughed nervously and tried not to wrinkle her nose as a bowl of the detestable fruit appeared in front of her.

"Go ahead and eat without me," Taban said, piling food on a tray. "I promised your mother I'd eat with her today." Pausing to tousle his daughter's hair, he picked up the tray and headed upstairs.

As soon as he was out the door, Lucca pushed the berries aside and impaled a sausage. So she actually _liked_ the foul little blue things in this reality? _Crono, you were a better influence than you knew._

It was the wrong thing to think. Staring listlessly at the meat on the end of her fork, Lucca sighed and rested her chin in her free hand. Sure, it wasn't helping anything to wallow, but she was having a hard time stopping.

Crono wouldn't have wallowed. Nor would Marle, who held an unshakable belief that if the fundamental truths of reality were in conflict with the way things should be, then reality was just going to have to give. Why mope when you could opt for an empowering case of denial? But Lucca thought too much.

Or, taking into account what she'd done yesterday, maybe she didn't think enough. Or at least didn't think about the right things.

Frowning, Lucca made a conscious effort to switch off her brain and get through the portions of breakfast that were not blueberries. Taste didn't register. When she'd finished, she grabbed her helmet, packed her knapsack, and slipped out before her father came back downstairs. No sense clinging to a timeline that she was going to unmake. Wishing that she had the Wondershot instead of the decidedly less lethal-looking gun she'd found in her room, Lucca set out once more for Leene Square.

_Don't think about it,_ she told herself. _Just see if Robo's there. Then make_ him _think about it._

As expected, the square was empty. The people who got the most use out of the public space were the ones who came to read books or simper at a significant other, neither of which was traditionally an early-morning activity. And the kids never came out until after lunch.

As Lucca ascended the steps to the upper plaza, she saw that someone had decided to show up after all. A girl was sitting on top of the arch of Leene's Bell with her back to Lucca, her feet kicking idly at the air, a crossbow at her side.

The name escaped before Lucca had to time to process the image: "Marle!"

The girl on the bell looked over her shoulder with a start. "Hey, there!" she called down, swinging herself around to face south. "Are you looking for someone?"

The girl was Marle in everything but fact. The bright eyes, the honest face, the cheerfully impractical outfit... Every detail was exact, down to the pendant dangling from her neck. But this was Nadia, the princess who ran away from home on a regular basis and couldn't stop butting heads with her father long enough to hear an apology. This girl had never traveled through time and saved the world. This girl had never known Crono.

"If I tell you a secret," Lucca heard herself saying, "will you promise to believe me?"

After a split-second's hesitation, Nadia climbed halfway down the structure and leapt the rest. "You look kinda familiar," she said, tapping her foot thoughtfully as she took in Lucca's appearance. Recognition lit her face as she put a hand to her mouth. "Oh! You're the one who built that crazy machine!"

Lucca winced. At least that explained the horrified woman in Crono's house. "There's a long story there," she said, wondering if telling everything to the princess who looked like her friend was really such a good idea. But out of all her former companions, Marle would have been the most likely to believe. Marle believed in a lot of things, some of which made Lucca despair for the future of Guardia, but sometimes there was something to be said for blind faith. Now, for instance. The thought of facing the wreckage of history alone was a bleak one.

 

_And I don't know how much longer I can handle being the only person who knows._

 

Nadia looked uncertain for moment, no doubt weighing the rumors she'd heard against Lucca's current behavior, then gestured for Lucca to follow her over to the nearest bench. "I like stories," she said, smiling as she sat down, "and I've been pretty bored all day."

They were off to a good start, then. Of course, diplomacy had never been one of Lucca's strong points, and she wasn't sure how to handle a situation as delicate as explaining that the world in its current form should not exist. Perhaps it would be best to start with some credentials.

"My name's Lucca," she said, seating herself, "and you're Princess Nadia, daughter of King Guardia XXXIII and regular runaway. Your favorite food is ice cream. A few years ago you bribed a solider into teaching you how to use a crossbow so that you wouldn't feel defenseless. Most perfumes make you sneeze. You sleep curled up on your side, and you hog the covers. Oh, and you've got really cold feet, too."

There was a terrible silence.

"Oh, my God." Nadia scooted to the far end of the bench. "Are you some kind of stalker?"

Maybe that had been the wrong approach. "Look," Lucca said, the words almost tripping over one another in the rush to explain, "the thing is, you and me and my friend Crono went on this huge quest to save the world from an alien parasite, and we traveled through time a lot and learned magic, and after we made everything right I did something really, really stupid and made it so Crono was never born. And, um, now I'm trying to get things back the way they were. With Crono. And without the evil... alien...thing." Lucca slumped. "I promise it sounded a lot less unlikely when it was happening."

Nadia blinked at her, then turned her gaze to Leene's Bell. After a long, thoughtful pause, she said, "You mean there was another me?"

"You called yourself Marle. Crono ran into you at the Millennial Fair..."

Lucca had never told anyone the whole story before. When the group ended up in 1000 AD after killing Lavos, she'd told the king (and her parents) an abbreviated version that left out most of the information concerning Zeal, along with Melchoir's identity, the existence of the Epoch, and that fact that one of the "heroes" in question had waged a bloody war on Guardia four hundred years ago. Crono's death and the Red Gate had also been omitted on the grounds that their telling would only create unnecessary pain. And there were a thousand little things that she'd never wanted to share with anyone who hadn't experienced them with her. How could a non-participant be expected to understand the stupid jokes and late-night, so-deep-at-the-time philosophical rhapsodies? How would anyone outside their circle know what it was to watch the Time Egg shatter?

And she wasn't going to tell Nadia the full story now, either. More specifically, Lucca was planning to hit the highlights of the journey with an emphasis on things Marle did and a discreet lack of Crono's death and Magus's assisstance. If necessary, the complicated facts could come later, once Nadia had accepted the rest. There simply wasn't time to say everything.

Especially at the rate Nadia kept interrupting.

"You mean _this_ pendant?"

"So I look just like my very great-grandmother, huh? Say, does she have a mole on her—"

"Can we not talk about the bad future anymore? It makes me... Oh, a friendly robot! Okay."

"I knew magic? Wow! Could I fly and zap things and make animals talk and—"

"There was alcohol in that poi, wasn't there? Hey, answer me!"

"So a giant frog beat Magus? That's a lot more fun than what the history tutor told me."

"What happened to Schala? What do you _mean_ you don't know?"

"I made up with my father? Really?"

"Yay! A happy ending!"

Lucca sighed. "Well, there _was_," she said, raising her hand to cut off Nadia's impending commentary. "You remember what I just told you about the forest, right?"

Nadia nodded, clearly enraptured by the tale for reasons that defied Lucca's comprehension. Lucca wasn't much of a storyteller, and the whole adventure sounded even more bizarre filtered through her efforts, but Nadia had listened eagerly. Maybe she wasn't entirely convinced that Lucca wasn't just an entertaining eccentric, but she _wanted_ to believe. Maybe that was enough.

"Well, we found out a few days ago—in my reality, I mean—that saving the forest meant that everyone in Sandorino died horribly." Without giving Nadia a chance to jump in, Lucca continued, "A special Gate let me go back in time and save the town, but for some reason it's caused all... this." She waved her hand to indicate the world at large. "I think I saved someone who made it so that Crono was never born."

Nadia pursed her lips in thought, staring at the bell and scuffing her sandals against the ground. Lucca held her breath. _Trust me. You always did before._

At last Nadia turned to her and said, "So there's a Gate around here?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to **Myshu** and **Xyn** for catching the rogue typos. I proof and I proof, and they do not go away...

"Wow!"

It had taken Nadia a moment to recover from the shock of seeing a spherical distortion in the fabric of reality, but now she was almost dancing around it, poking at it and giggling when her fingers passed through the pulsating blue. After a few more swipes, she turned to Lucca and said, "Hey, why didn't anyone see this at the Millennial Fair?"

"Because they didn't have this." Lucca pulled the Gate Key out of her knapsack and waited for Nadia to admire it. When all she got was a curious nod, she deflated a bit and said, "I call it the Gate Key. Unless a Gate is 'opened,' for lack of a better term, no one can pass through it." She indicated the blue sphere and added, "One of my especially clever features is automatic Gate detection, which excites any Gate in a thirty-meter radius into visibility."

Nadia's attention had already wandered, and she gave only a vague nod as she stuck her forearm through the distortion. Like Marle, her interest in science didn't seem to extend past things that lit up or exploded. Lucca crossed her arms and waited for the novelty to wear off.

"I'm not sure if this is really cool or really creepy," Nadia said, standing so that the bright sphere appeared to have replaced her upper torso.

"They're unstable, you know. Sometimes they open by themselves."

In a flash Nadia had put a safe distance between herself and the Gate. Lucca suppressed a grin.

After a pause, Nadia turned her attention back to Lucca and said, "So you're going to go through this and try to fix everything?"

"Yeah. I'm going to see if Robo is still in the Middle Ages, and then work from there." Lucca noticed that her hands were clenched and consciously relaxed them. "Listen, I know this is weird, but would you—"

"Of course I'm coming along!" Nadia dashed away from the Gate and retrieved her crossbow from the ground, slinging it back over her shoulder. Even the bounce was identical to Marle's. "I can't just stay here while you save the world! And this place stinks, anyway."

Was that why she was willing to believe? Lucca sighed and said, "It's not like your other life was perfect, you know. Sure, you had Crono and your father and a lot of bragging rights, but you still had some problems. I mean, you still got clingy whenever anyone brought up the death thing, even after—" The words were out before she had finished weighing them, and Lucca groaned. _Mouth, please consult brain._

Ignoring Nadia's repeated attempts to interrupt, Lucca condensed Crono's death and something akin to resurrection into a thirty-second information dump. There was a long silence when she'd finished.

"But he was okay in the end," Nadia said, as if that settled the matter. "And anyway, we've got to save the world!" She pointed at the Gate. "C'mon, Lucca! Let's get going!"

A smile tugged at Lucca's lips, but it came with a pang. "Crono would be right behind you."

Nadia's face softened. Clasping her hands behind her back, she said, "Hey, Lucca, would you mind telling me a little more about Crono? It sounds like he was really important, and, well..."

The vague urgency in the back of Lucca's mind was a poor match for the front-and-center need to talk about what she'd lost. Letting the memories bubble up from where she'd tried to ignore them, she began, "Well, he was an absolute angel when he was sleeping, which was about half the time. The other half he spent getting into trouble. Crono didn't usually think much before acting. And he was too brave for his own good."

Nadia smiled. "What did he look like?"

"The defining feature was definitely the hair." Lucca moved her hands overhead to pantomime Crono's unique approach to style. "Bright red, too. And he had fashion sense worse than mine and kind of a dopey grin. Nice eyes, though. They were..."

Something twitched in the recesses of Lucca's mind. Where she looked for the color, she found only a hole. And new memories flowed like molten metal, pouring into the void to give themselves form: a lonely girl who convinced herself she didn't need friends, inventions no one was willing to risk, a family too dysfunctional to share meals.

"Shit," she muttered, digging through her bag for a pen and notebook. "Why didn't I think of this before?" As Nadia watched in confusion, Lucca's pen tore across the page: "mom walked crono lived in the house with the green door you saved the world crono was your friend—"

The pen was snatched away. Lucca glared up from the paper to find Nadia giving her a worried look. "Lucca? Is something wrong?"

Lucca wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, and the sound that escaped hadn't make up its mind, either. "I should have thought of this," she said, her hands shaking the as she clutched the notebook. "I knew memory replacement would happen—it happened before—but not this _fast_."

Crying seemed to be winning. Furiously she wiped her eyes as Nadia said, "What on earth are you talking about?"

"His eyes." Lucca managed to laugh, but the sound was hollow. "I've already forgotten what color his eyes were."

Nadia shook her head. "I have trouble remembering eye colors, too. Don't freak."

"That's not it." Lucca shoved her supplies back into the bag. "I'm forgetting, and I'm going to _keep_ forgetting, and it looks like it's happening a lot faster than last time. We have to hurry."

Even if Nadia wasn't sure what Lucca was talking about, she had the sense not to push for an explanation. Instead she patted her crossbow and nodded.

Brandishing the Gate Key, Lucca keyed in the sequence of buttons to activate the portal. At least the eerie sound and flash of blue were still familiar.

Nadia let out a little shriek as the Gate stretched and flattened itself into a hole. To her credit, though, she composed herself and grinned. "Ready or not," she said, and they stepped forward together into the flickering energy.

 

Lucca managed to remain upright when she was tossed into Truce Canyon, but Nadia let out a startled squeak and tumbled face-first into the grass. Making a half-hearted effort to hide her amusement, Lucca helped the princess to her feet.

"Wow, that was a rush!" Nadia bounded across the clearing and stared wide-eyed at the landscape before her. "So this is really the Middle Ages, huh? I wanna see the knights and the old villages and—"

Sighing, Lucca grabbed Nadia by the shoulder and yanked her back into the ring of trees. "There are Mystics around here," she said. "Leaderless but bitter and probably still very aggressive Mystics. So unless you're up for a fight, do what I do." Returning the Gate Key to her bag, Lucca drew her gun, put a finger to her lips, and motioned for Nadia to follow.

They had almost reached the fields when two dark shapes came screaming down from the sky.

"Left one's mine!" Lucca called, taking aim. As her shot knocked the bird off course and sent it fluttering dizzily to the ground, her suspicions about the gun were confirmed—it had been designed to stun, not kill. She sighed and turned to sight the other bird.

To her surprise, it was already plummeting. Nadia cheered and began a victory dance.

Lucca grinned. "Not bad, Princess. Escape through Guardia Forest often?"

"Maybe." Nadia returned her grin, then stopped mid-wiggle. "The dance is too much, isn't it?"

"A little. Please don't tell me you did it every time you brought down the woodland population."

"Nah, I never had an audience." Nadia giggled. "Anyway," she added, turning south, "Truce is still this way, right?"

Nothing else attacked them on the way, suggesting that northeastern Zenan wasn't a popular area for Mystic raiding parties. Or else the Mystics were still shell-shocked from the sudden death of their leader. Lucca remembered enough history to know that human-Mystic skirmishes continued for years after the war and petered off only after the founding of Medina, but apparently the area around Truce, at least in 601, was secure. If any Mystics were still holed up in the canyon, they seemed reluctant to carry the battle to the fields.

As the first of the town's outlying houses came into view, Lucca stopped Nadia and gave her a critical look. "I don't think they'd mistake you for the queen when she's not missing," she said, "but you'll definitely draw attention to us. We should stay off the main roads."

Nadia nodded. "How far is it from here to Sandorino?"

"Less than a day's walk, if the bridge is still repaired." Keeping a safe distant from the buildings, Lucca began a course that would take them through the areas with the sparsest populations.

"And what if it isn't?"

"We hope someone's got a boat."

"Seriously?"

"More or less, yeah."

They walked in silence for while, broken only by Nadia's periodic fascination with the landscape. Lucca couldn't see how it differed much from what she saw in her own time, but the unsettled land around the village did have a certain rugged charm, if you liked that sort of thing. Lucca didn't. Sure, she was never one to turn down a good camping trip, but she had a hard time appreciating empty fields.

Once they'd passed through Truce and started to follow the coast, Lucca caught herself checking for signs of fishing boats. _Well, someone has to be the pessimist,_ she reminded herself, watching Nadia ooh and ahh over the tiny waves lapping at the shore. Of course, Marle and Crono had been the same way. Until they'd found the future in tatters, neither of them had really let go of the idea that time travel was one big game.

When they paused for a breather as the land curved south, Nadia ended a series of observations on the kingdom's dirt roads by saying, "Hey, could you tell me a little more about Robo?"

Lucca hadn't expected it to hurt. But somewhere mixed in with the recent memory of seeing him again and the ever-present worry that he didn't exist in the future was the fear of what waited for her at Fiona's house, and her emotions were a little raw to begin with.

"I'm sorry," Nadia said, misinterpreting the silence. "You don't have to talk about it."

Lucca shook her head. "No, it's okay. It's just that Robo is—was—_is_ such a good friend, and I let myself miss out on a lot of time we could have spent together because I was afraid." She picked at the grass for a few seconds, then said, "I remember when we found him. You were worried he'd attack us if I fixed him, and even Crono looked a little uneasy, but you both trusted me. I could have gotten us all killed, and you trusted me anyway."

Nadia looked away. "Lucca, I—"

"Let's go," Lucca said abruptly, getting to her feet. "It's not that much farther to the bridge."

Again there was silence, this time less easy, until the Zenan Strait came into view, spanned by a dark line of wood. As they drew nearer, the situation clarified itself.

On the bright side, the bridge still appeared to be in good shape in this timeline. _Which means Guardia's public works department has actually gotten worse over the centuries,_ Lucca thought sourly, remembering the ordeal involved in getting the transportation department to remove the remains of a wrecked ferry boat from her family's island. Judging by the clarity of it, that particular memory featured in all of her realities. _Of course._

On the side more in keeping with Lucca's luck, the bridge was guarded by a detachment of knights, all of whom were watching the two girls intently. If the cards and dice littering the ground were any indication, it had been a long, boring day for Guardia's finest, and no distraction would be allowed to pass unrelished.

"Halt!" barked the knight who either was the leader or fancied himself so. "Who goes there?"

Another knight nudged him. "Wouldn't it be 'Who _go_ there?' There are two of them."

Scowling, the leader repeated, "Who goes there?"

"Travelers," Nadia said brightly before Lucca could reply. "We're going to Sandorino."

On reflection, Lucca decided that letting her do the talking probably wouldn't be a bad idea. It took a deep level of paranoia to believe that anyone with eyes like Nadia's was hatching a plot.

Of course, the war had turned paranoia into a survival skill. "And who might you unescorted maidens be visiting?"

"Whom."

"_Who_," insisted the leader, shooting a glare at his subordinate. Without waiting for a reply, he squinted at Nadia and said, "Wait. Are you any relation to the queen?"

Nadia giggled. "Nope, but I get that a lot."

The leader gave her a thoughtful stare. "A most uncanny resemblance," he said, shaking his head. "And the person you're visiting?"

"Our uncle."

Lucca stifled a groan as the assembled troops stared at the girls. _Way to go, Princess._ Announcing that they were time travelers would have netted a less incredulous reaction than claiming a close genetic connection. But there was nothing for it now except to inject some plausibility into the lie.

"We're cousins," Lucca said. When most of the soldiers remained skeptical, she added, "By adoption."

Nadia nodded. "Aunt Betty found her under a tree."

"At an orphanage."

"With a note." At Lucca's withering look, she amended, "But it was just somebody's shopping list. Strangest thing, really."

Silence settled in like an overweight cat.

"Well, then," the leader said at last. "I couldn't help but notice your, er, clothes..."

"Our uncle's sick," Nadia said quickly. "We're going to cheer him up."

The only sound was that of Lucca smacking herself repeatedly in the forehead.

Countless horrified stares later, the leader cleared his throat. "Yes. Well. That is." Syntax seemed to be eluding him. "Be that as it may. Ahem. Maybe you should just pass... on... through." Without taking his eyes off the girls, he dug a sheet of paper out of a bag and held it out mutely. Nadia took it with a cheerful exclamation of thanks.

Without another word, the soldiers split into two lines, creating a wide aisle. Lucca grabbed Nadia by the arm and took off southward. She could still feel her face reddening when they presented their pass to the guards on the southern end of the bridge.

"'We're going to cheer him up,'" Lucca mimicked under her breath as they left the troops' earshot. "Honestly."

Nadia froze as if struck by the iron mallet of realization. "Omigod, I didn't mean it _that_ way!"

 

The sun hung low in the sky when they reached the outskirts of Sandorino. "I know we're in a hurry and all," Nadia said, glancing longingly at the houses, "but is it really safe to go into the desert at night? You know, with the darkness and the scorpions and everything..."

Visions of dark, whirling vortices of paradox gaping over the moonlit sand flashed through Lucca's mind. Her legs hurt, too. Even hell had to look better after a proper night's sleep.

"Good point," Lucca said, starting toward the R &amp; R Hotel and motioning for Nadia to follow. "We'll leave early tomorrow, though, before it gets too hot."

It was amazing how Nadia could still do the bouncy cheer after an entire day of traveling. It also walked the thin line between comfort and painful reminder. But given enough time, the sense of familiarity would wash away, and the hole it left would be filled. What would Lucca believe had really happened? Would there even be enough of her left to wonder?

A tap on her shoulder jolted her from her thoughts. "Um, Lucca?" said Nadia. "You've been staring at the door for a while now. You okay?"

"Sorry. It's nothing." After paying for a room (and counting herself lucky that any era would accept gold as currency), Lucca made her way to their temporary quarters and sat down heavily at the desk. Nadia kicked off her sandals and flopped on the bed.

"I think I need better traveling shoes," she moaned, raising her feet into the air to examine them. "I can _feel_ the blisters forming."

Pulling off her boots, Lucca snorted and said, "I don't know how many times I told you—"

She caught herself before she finished, but the awkward silence came regardless. _She's not Marle,_ Lucca reminded herself. _It's not fair to want her to be._

Although Nadia made a few more efforts at conversation as she got ready for bed, the discomfort had settled in for the evening. At last she gave up and went to sleep early, adding that it was okay if Lucca wanted to sit up with the light on a while.

Lucca didn't _want_ to sit up with the light on, but she certainly couldn't sleep.

It wasn't Nadia's fault, of course. It wasn't right to be frustrated with her for not being Marle, and it wasn't right to remind her that, from Lucca's perspective, she wasn't supposed to exist. But it was also impossible to forget that the point of their quest was to iron her out of history, whether they acknowledged it or not. Lucca suspected Nadia hadn't comprehended, or hadn't allowed herself to comprehend, what was really being asked of her. Risking life and limb to fight for the planet's future was one thing. But if someone had told Lucca that she had to erase herself for the greater good, well... Frankly, she doubted her sense of self-preservation would have stood for it.

After all, this wasn't just a case of "I'm going to shoot you in the head to save the world." This was more to the order of "I want to you to go on a journey without a map, jump through every flaming hoop you come across, and struggle valiantly against reality itself so that you may, in the end, have the pleasure of shooting yourself in the head."

It would hurt to care about Nadia. But Lucca's only alternative was to tell herself that no one in this bastard timeline mattered, and that didn't seem right.

_And what,_ she asked herself wryly, _is right about any of this?_

Setting her thoughts aside as well as she could, Lucca pulled her notebook out of her sack and opened it to a fresh page. She had more practical concerns now, especially if Fiona's desert turned out to be a dead end.

She took out a pen and began to write.

_6/24/601 AD_

_Nadia, who is not Marle, knows most of what happened. And I remember telling her, so this is probably going to end with me knowing and not remembering and feeling like I heard about it all in a bedtime story. I don't know how far or fast the memory replacement is going to go, so the best I can do is write everything down now. Make memories of making memories, I guess._

_Just in case a future me is reading this and doesn't know what's going on, here's a message for me: Stop shaking your head and hear yourself out for a minute. Yeah, we both know time travel is bullshit. It happened anyway._

_I hope I never need to be reminded of this, but here goes. I had a best friend named Crono, and we both helped save the world, and Mom could walk. And I had friends, even if a lot of them were scattered in different eras. Stop shaking your head, future me._

_So on to the story. The important part kicked off when Crono brought this girl he'd met to see the Telepod..._

 

 

A dream about being caught in a giant washing machine segued into a reality of being shaken awake.

"Lucca, are you okay?" Nadia asked, her eyes bright with concern. "There was plenty of room in the bed for you. You didn't have to sleep in the chair."

Lucca blinked at the face in front of her, then noticed the tiny puddle of drool on the desk. "I didn't mean to fall asleep," she said, pointing to the shaky line of ink that trailed down the open page of her notebook. "Guess I didn't realize how tired I was." Stretching her arms over her head, Lucca got to her feet. "How the heck are you this energetic?"

Nadia shrugged. "I went to bed early. And I guess I'm kind of excited." She smiled as if nothing had ever been wrong.

"I'm sorry," Lucca found herself saying.

The next moment she found herself in a lung-compressing hug. "You're my friend!" Nadia said. "And friends help each other out when things are tough! Don't worry!" With a final squeeze, she released Lucca and allowed her to breathe.

Lucca nodded. She wasn't sure what to say to that; she wasn't even sure what she felt. But Nadia nodded back, grinned, and said, "Race you for first bath."

Nadia won. Remembering the joy of the R &amp; R Hotel's state-of-the-art public baths, Lucca hadn't made much of an effort to get there first. She pulled out her notebook as she waited for Nadia to return, no doubt with a little bit of trauma in tow.

Lucca's summary of the adventure that saved the future had almost reached the end before she'd started drifting in and out of sleep. While it was difficult to tell exactly when Lucca's mind had wandered dreamward, the line "Then apocalypse sponge up" was as good a starting point as any. Her cursory description of the battle against Lavos included not only words that appeared to have wandered in from somewhere else, like "boot," but also a few new ones, including the utterly baffling "corplug." The line of ink from when she'd passed out and dragged the pen down the page came at the end of a moving description of the Moonlight Parade: "We said good and everyonebody went back to their ears but Crono momcat—"

Lucca turned over a fresh page and backtracked to the end of the world.

When Nadia returned after only a few minutes, pale and stammering about people getting filthier after being in the water, Lucca decided to follow her lead in passing on the bath and just smoothing out her clothing a little. It wasn't as if they'd be terribly clean after their trek through the desert, anyway.

And she wasn't going to think about it until she got there. _Worse than you hope, better than you fear,_ she told herself, but her hopes were timid and her fears marvelously creative. And what she feared above all else was finding nothing.

Nadia glanced over as she repaired her ponytail. "Wanna hear about the time I kept a baby hetake as a pet?"

Lucca nodded. Sure, she'd heard the story from Marle, but she'd never heard it from Nadia. Besides, if Marle's version was any indication, it was exactly the kind of tale she needed to keep her spirits up.

"Well," began Nadia, brushing herself off as she and Lucca started for the door, "I was eight years old and skipping my lessons to play in the forest..."

 

"I can't _believe_ you tried to feed Mr. Umbles under the table." Lucca had gone from grinning to snickering as the story progressed, and she was now dangerously close to giggling. Apparently Marle had left out a few of the juicier details, most likely because she had shared the story in mixed company and hadn't wanted to make herself look quite so foolish in front of Crono. If Nadia had any similar hangups, she must have decided that making Lucca smile was more important. The idea was touching.

But it was also less entertaining than the epic tale of When Mr. Umbles Was Disguised As a Footstool, and Lucca was inclined to keep her attention focused on the lighter side of things.

"Yep," Nadia replied. "I had to pretend I was the one doing all the grunting and slobbering."

They were a good distance into the desert now, and Fiona's house was already visible. So far there were no signs of saplings, but there was no telling where the planting had begun. If it had begun. Lucca wasn't thinking about it.

"So how does the story end?" she asked. "With everyone in the castle grudgingly accepting Mr. Umbles, or with his midnight release into the forest?" Marle had never gotten to that part; Ayla had shot off in pursuit of something outside the inn, which had turned out to be a dog stealing a string of sausages from Porre's nearest deli. By the time they'd straightened that mess out, Magus had indicated, with a remarkable economy of words, that none of this was helping them find the Sunstone, that there was no need to send the Epoch on multiple trips to get everyone to comb the city for the damn thing, that they certainly hadn't needed to stop for lunch, and that while this was the first ridiculous errand they'd dragged him on that seemed in any way likely to result in practical Lavos-slaying power, they were still going about it like a pack of empty-skulled cretins. Magus had been an incredible bitch most of the time.

Back in the present, Nadia's eyes darkened. "Actually," she said, "my father had the guards kill Mr. Umbles. He said that all monsters end up dangerous." Her next step was a kick. "Monsters aren't dangerous when they're eating out of your hand."

_He was only trying to protect you, even if he was never good at explaining it._ Saying it aloud, though, wouldn't have helped, so Lucca took a different approach. "You might want to try changing the ending. I'm all for Mr. Umbles being appointed Knight Captain."

"Nah, I think he was more of a Chancellor type." Nadia smiled at her, but neither of them spoke again until they'd reached Fiona's house.

Combing the desert aimlessly for signs of trees wouldn't work, but asking Fiona if the mystic seedling had gone missing would at least give them an idea of what was happening in this era. Lucca rapped twice on the door.

"I don't think there's anybody home," Nadia whispered after several seconds had gone by. Shaking her head stubbornly, Lucca knocked again.

This time the door creaked ajar, and a pale, gaunt face peeked through the crack. It seemed to belong to Fiona, but this was a Fiona who looked as if she'd aged a decade in a year. The eyes suggested that their owner perceived sanity as an event rather than a state of being.

Lucca gaped and finally managed, "Fiona?" The question wasn't just a formality.

The woman narrowed her eyes. "Who are you?" she asked in a paper-thin voice. "My husband is gone. Gone long ago and never come back. What do you want from me?"

So in this timeline, Marco hadn't survived the war. Had he fallen at Zenan Bridge? Or had it been one of the later, even bloodier battles against the Mystics who had advanced almost as far as Guardia Castle? Turning the tide at the bridge had once reassured Lucca that they were indeed making history better, preventing so much carnage.

"We're here to help," Nadia said. Her tone was too nervous to be soothing. "Your forest—"

"Don't mention that forest!" A dangerously thin finger pointed from out of the shadows. "Day and night, that—that _thing_ in the north—oh, God, no one else—" Fiona's hand retreated a split-second before the door slammed.

Lucca and Nadia stared at the house in silence until Nadia asked, "Was she like that before?"

"Not even remotely." Lucca pursed her lips, then turned and began walking, keeping the rising sun on her right. "At least now we know where to look."

Nadia seemed too shaken to ask many questions, which was fine with Lucca. She had enough of her own, beginning with "What else happened?" Fiona was too strong to be broken by the loss of her husband. There had been a popular tragic legend in the original timeline about the woman who died trying to resurrect a forest, and it had never occurred to Lucca before that when the story referred to Fiona's "lonely struggle," it meant that Marco must have died. She poked gingerly at the newest set of memories still trying to take root in her brain, but Fiona's story didn't seem to ring a bell. The poor woman must have died forgotten in this timeline.

But how could Lucca's actions have affected something that happened more than a century before her intervention? She knew first-hand that interfering with an ancestor could wreak havoc with a descendent, but it just didn't work the other way around. There was a variable missing here. From the evidence, it had to be something that removed Retinite, horrified Fiona, nurtured the forest, and wiped itself from memory long before the turn of the millennium.

Lucca had thought of an impossibility before. She refused to acknowledge it now.

Nadia suddenly latched onto her arm. _So now I'm her Crono substitute?_ shot through Lucca's mind as she turned her attention back to her surroundings. Following Nadia's gaze, she saw a gleaming shape in the near distance, something that looked remarkably like—

_Robo._


	4. Chapter 4

Part of Lucca's mind wanted to feel relief, another part remembered Fiona's eyes, and still another tried to unravel the paradox only to end up tangled in it. Over the three of them was a fourth piece screaming, _Run to him, he has to remember you, you can't do this alone_—

_No,_ she thought, shaking her head, _I damn well _have_ to do this alone._ She glanced at Nadia. _More or less._

Nadia's grip tightened. "Lucca, what _is_ that?" she whispered. "That's not Robo, is it?"

It was strange how knowing Robo had colored Lucca's perception to the point that several hundred pounds of armed machinery didn't seem threatening. Of course she was aware that he could be dangerous—she'd fixed his weapons systems more times than she could remember, and she'd fought robots with identical designs. But she had always been secure in the knowledge that Robo would never hurt her. Nadia had never had that certainty, and Lucca wasn't sure that it existed anymore.

"Stay behind me," Lucca said, extricating herself from Nadia's hold. "If I tell you to run, don't argue."

The stricken look on Nadia's face made Lucca want to say something to comfort her, but Lucca had never been good at lying to put people at ease. The best she could do was keep her wildest fears to herself.

"Is he..." Nadia paused, pursed her lips, and finally settled on "Safe?"

Lucca shrugged and drew her gun. "No idea."

As Nadia followed her, crossbow drawn, Lucca squinted at the area around the bright metal. The earth grew browner and firmer along the way, and little spindles of darkness were just visible through the heat distortion. The area was nearly identical to the one she'd visited two days and a lifetime ago.

At last she came near enough that she could no longer tell herself that it might not be Robo. Every detail was precise, down to the dent he acquired in the Tyrano Lair that she'd never managed to buff out. But even though Lucca should have shown up on Robo's peripheral sensors, he kept planting as if she were invisible.

"Robo?" she managed.

His head swiveled to face her, and his eyes flickered. "Good morning," he said without pausing in his work. "A defect. I am a defect."

Nadia drew in a loud, shaky breath. "Lucca, what is he—"

Lucca held up a hand to cut her off. "Robo?" she said again. Her voice sounded childish in her ears. "Robo, do you remember me?"

"Understood," he replied. "Madam Lucca fixed me."

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening, because she couldn't have fixed him in this timeline. For him to exist here...

Lucca bit her lip, then said, "You're the eye of the paradox."

Robo's head turned back to the tree he was planting. "Half-human, half-dinosaur. An unlikely life form. Our interference has made them dominant."

"What is he talking about?" Nadia whispered. "And what on earth are _you_ talking about?"

As Robo began a rambling discourse about the children on the warlock's throne, Lucca stared vacantly at the field and said, "I don't know what he's talking about now. It's like the timestream crashed in him, and he's picking up on possibilities that never came to pass." She turned to Nadia. "But what I'm talking about is the paradox I created when I saved Sandorino. If Robo never came here, then there never would have been a fire for me to stop, but if Robo came here, then I couldn't have stopped the fire, and—"

Robo interrupted with a whirring noise. "I know you," he said, turning to Nadia. "The princess is a frog."

Nadia gave him a distressed look. "No, I'm _not_. And you've never even met me!"

Robo blinked. "Do not upset her," he said, packing dirt around a recent transplant. "She is rather agitated right now."

Lucca put a hand on Nadia's shoulder before she could say anything else. "I don't know why he's like this," she said quietly. "Something must have kept him here to stabilize the timeline, but I don't what or how." That was more ignorance than Lucca cared to admit at once, so she added, "Yet."

As he marched forward to the next hole in the ground, pulling a cart of potted saplings behind him, Robo turned to Lucca again and blinked. "Re-evaluation of data indicates that the subject is indeed tricycle-based."

"Robo," Lucca said as firmly as she could, "let me open you up and see if I can fix you. Just like old times, okay?" She retrieved a screwdriver from her bag and took a few hesitant steps forward. "I think I can—"

Something blasted her backward with the force of a fire hose, landing her in a heap several feet away. Nadia shrieked and ran to help her up. As Lucca took her hand, wincing, she looked up to see Robo continuing his work as if nothing had happened.

"Nothing touched you," Nadia said, her words tumbling out in a verbal waterfall. "You just walked and—and—WHAM! It was like something threw you, but nothing touched you and—was it the wind? Can the wind do that?" She blushed at the look Lucca shot her. "Okay, not the wind. Wait—was that magic? Is that what magic's like?"

"That wasn't magic," Lucca said, brushing the soil off her legs. When Nadia looked dubious, she sighed and said, "Look, I've been hit with everything from tiny bubbles to freaking Dark Matter, and I _know_ what magic feels like. That was... something else."

A mechanical humming came from Robo's direction. It took Lucca only a few bars to recognize the song that Gaspar had dubbed "Memories of Crono."

"That's it," she said, clenching her fists. "Stand back. I'm torching the trees."

"Are you sure—" Nadia began, but she cut off with a startled shriek as flames erupted from the space above Lucca's palms.

The fire streaked toward the saplings, casting a stark orange glow over the world. Lucca was too preoccupied by the fact that she still had magic to appreciate the moment. Perhaps her power's metaphysical nature meant that she would keep the spells for as long as she kept the memory of them. Or perhaps—

Lucca's train of thought derailed as she watched her spell fizzle into nothingness before it came close enough to damage the trees. Gritting her teeth, she marched toward the nearest sapling and was unsurprised when she was thrown back before she got close enough to uproot it. She sent two futile gunshots at it from where she'd landed.

"See?" Lucca said as Nadia helped her up again. "That was magic. It's a lot showier than whatever's going on here."

Nadia's eyes were wide. "I can't believe I just saw that. You just moved your hands and—BOOM! Could I do that, too? The BOOM and everything?"

"Something similar, yeah." Lucca's attention had turned back to Robo, who had stopped humming and was facing her as he planted another sapling.

"Do not despair," he said. "We placed too much hope in bringing Crono back."

"But he _did_ come back," Lucca said, half to herself. A theory was already falling together in her mind, and the more she hated it, the more plausible it became. _If I'd spent last year studying paradox theory instead of tinkering, this wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't have needed to see it before it clicked. Damn you, Coffee Mate 2300._

Lucca turned to Nadia with more emotion than she'd intended. "I get it now. This, the forest, the future, all of it—having Robo here keeps the paradoxes in check." She paused to wipe her glasses, which weren't dirty. "When we left him here before, he became an anchor. And the timestream didn't need two of those. So when we sent him back to his era, we erased him."

Nadia shook her head. "But you told me there was a happy ending and—"

"We _erased_ him." The words tasted like bile, but Lucca couldn't stop them from coming: "Oh, I'm sure he was still in the future, but he was Prometheus and never Robo. We wiped Robo out of existence the moment we sent him home. Now this is all that's left of him, and I—"

Something in Robo whirred. "_That_ was my purpose?" he said. "Impossible. That would be rude." Then he turned and went back to planting, humming a slow, almost funereal version of Gaspar's melody.

Lucca stared after him for a moment, then wiped her cheeks to make sure that she wasn't crying. "Come on," she said crisply, turning south and motioning for Nadia to follow. "There's nothing we can do here."

Nadia ran after her, throwing a worried look over her shoulder once she'd caught up. "Um, where are we going?"

"Back to Sandorino. We need a new plan."

After a moment's hesitation, Nadia put a hand on her shoulder. "Lucca, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." It came out sharper than she'd intended, so Lucca took a deep breath and said, "I mean, I'm dealing with it. I just don't want to talk about it now."

"But if you don't talk about it—"

"Not now."

Nadia paused, sighed, and followed her in silence back to the town.

 

Two hours after checking back into the R &amp; R Hotel, Lucca still wasn't ready to talk about it. Instead she'd been scribbling madly in her notebook, hoping for a breakthrough and growing increasingly resentful of Sandorino. _I wreck the future for you, and you give me a desk with a wobbly leg?_

"Lucca?" called Nadia from her perch on the bed. "How about another, um, whatever these are?" Lucca turned to see her holding up one of the unidentified bread products they'd purchased on the way to the inn after Nadia had complained about the recent lack of meals.

Shaking her head, Lucca returned to her notes. "Not hungry."

Nadia snorted. "All I've seen you eat so far was that puffy thing with the raisins. Here, I think this is a croissant."

Something buttery landed in the middle of Lucca's sentence. Sighing, Lucca yielded to Nadia's need to be helpful and turned to face her, nibbling at the pastry. It tasted like wax paper.

"Much better," Nadia said, taking a bite out of something that might have been a muffin. "Now, we don't have to talk about, you know, that thing, but can we talk about what we're going to do next?" When Lucca didn't protest, she continued, "Okay, good. Any ideas yet?"

Lucca set down the probable croissant and sighed. "Right now, I'm thinking we should just kill everyone and hope for the best."

"Lucca! That's horrible!"

"I was kidding. At least, I think I was." She twirled her pen between her fingers to give herself something to concentrate on. "I'm just getting really frustrated. I mean, I can come up with an infinite number of theories, but there's no way to test them."

Nadia got up and peered at the mess of scratch-outs in Lucca's notebook. "For instance?"

Marle had always been a "particulars" person. Start conjecturing about deathbed regrets, and she'd want to know if there was something _you_ wanted to go back and change. Tell her what your new invention did, and she'd display a complete lack of comprehension until you made a trial run for her. Of course, Lucca was used to that sort of mindset after a lifelong friendship with Crono. She could vividly recall having to spell out practically the entire Guardian line of succession for him after Marle disappeared. Funny how she could remember that and forget his eyes.

Well, if nothing else, fleshing out a conjecture would give her mind something else to focus on.

"Allow me to demonstrate," Lucca said, flipping to a fresh sheet of paper. "We'll work from the basis of 'Crono's Ancestry Is Disrupted.'"

Nadia shifted positions to get a better view of the page. "Yay! Story time!"

"Uh, sort of. So back around 758, let's say there was a girl—" Lucca drew a smiling stick figure in a skirt— "and a boy who was in love with her." A less happy-looking stick figure stared at the first with lopsided eyes.

Nadia inspected the artwork. "What are their names?'

"They don't have any. This is hypothetical, remember?"

"Well, they need names."

Lucca rolled her eyes. "Jack and Jill. Happy?" When Nadia nodded, she continued, "And one day, this traveling merchant from Sandorino visits." Another stick figure joined the couple, this one with a grin and a sleazy mustache. "And he—"

"What's his name?"

Lucca tapped the paper impatiently with her pen and said, "Biff. Now he—"

"I can't take him seriously if you call him Biff. Jill wouldn't pass up Jack for _Biff_."

"Okay, fine. _You_ give him a name."

"Renaldo," she replied, a little too quickly.

Lucca quirked an eyebrow. "Someday I want to hear the story there." As Nadia's cheeks reddened, she said, "Anyway, Renaldo comes to town and sweeps Jill off her feet. They either get married or plan to, and then Renaldo goes back to Sandorino on a business trip."

Nadia nodded again, pointing at the unhappy stick figure. "Poor Jack. I think he's my favorite."

"Ahem," Lucca said, giving her a Look. "So Renaldo happens to be in his hometown when Ozzie the Whateverth attacks, and he dies in the fire." To make her point, Lucca sketched flames over his visual representation and drew "x"s over his eyes.

"Oh! I get it!" Nadia snatched the pen away. "So Jill turns to her best friend Jack," she said, drawing hearts over their heads and giving Jack a smile. "And then she realizes that she loved him all along, and they get married and have Crono's great-great-somebody." She added a happy-looking bundle of folds that was presumably meant to be a baby, then looked at Lucca and beamed.

"Exactly." Retrieving her writing utensil, Lucca added, "And in the timeline where we didn't save the forest, one of Renaldo's ancestors would have died in the landslide."

Nadia nodded. "Well, what are we waiting for? All we have to do is find Renaldo and keep him away from Jill!"

"Not so fast, Princess." Lucca grabbed Nadia's arm as she reached for her sandals. "This is all guesswork, remember? Instead of being a dashing young merchant, Renaldo might have been a murderer who killed one of Crono's ancestors. Or the priest who got Crono's very great-grandmother to join a nunnery. Heck, he might be Renalda. Or multiple Renaldos."

"Oh." Pursing her lips, Nadia flopped back onto the bed. "So how can we find out who died in the fire?"

"We can't. There's no record of it anymore." Lucca sighed. "It looks like the only way to fix this is to find a way to open another Red Gate and stop myself from saving the town."

Nadia frowned. "But then all those people would die."

"Better them than the whole planet." _I can't believe I just said that._ Before Lucca's brain could wrap itself around the implications, she added, "But the point's moot for now, since the Red Gates are a total mystery. As far as I can tell, they use a tremendous amount of supernatural energy to create a temporary wormhole between two specific events in the timestream." Nadia's eyes were glazing, so Lucca added, "Gate weird. We need. No can make."

"Hey!" Nadia stuck out her tongue.

Lucca returned the gesture. "Anyway, Gaspar lives at the End of Time, and I think he could help us. He's outside of time, there, too, so he should know what's going on."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Nadia leapt up and started for the door. "Let's go find him!"

Lucca grabbed her arm. "Hold your horses. The only way to open the path to the End of Time is by going through a Gate with more than three people. We're not more than three people."

"Oh." Nadia pursed her lips, then said, "Well, how hard can that be? There are lots of people around."

"Anybody you'd particularly care to trust with the secrets of space and time?" Lucca flipped over to a fresh page in her notebook. "Let's take me, for starters. I've got no friends. Zip. Nada. Nil. Just a lot of people who think I've completely lost it. And how about you? Got a lot of time to forge lasting relationships when you're running away from home every other weekend?"

For a moment, she thought that Nadia was going to slap her. But she only frowned at Lucca for a moment, then said, "Okay, I get it. We're lonely. So what else can we do?"

_Didn't mean to strike a nerve, there._ Lucca shrugged and said, "I know we can trust the friends I had before. And Frog's in this era. Probably still living in the... dammit." Muttering under her breath, she flipped to the narrative section of her notebook and skimmed the pages. "Cursed Woods. Why don't I remember that?"

Probably because she was developing a clear memory of her twelfth birthday party, which she had spent alone. Not even the promise of cake and party favors had lured her classmates to the "freak house," and Lara had been sick with something that required Taban's near-constant care. Left to her own devices, Lucca had dumped her cake in the garbage and spent the afternoon making furious modifications to an unfortunate appliance.

As much as she wanted to believe that she and Crono had held their own party somewhere, she couldn't remember anything to suggest that they had.

"Cursed Woods," Lucca said again, hoping that the syllables would strike a chord if she heard them often enough. "North of Porre. I should know this."

Nadia, who had probably never held a grudge against anyone who wasn't a blood relative, patted Lucca's shoulder. "It's okay. Let's go meet Frog."

 

_At least,_ Lucca reflected as she and Nadia forced their way through the bug-infested bracken, _we didn't waste time bathing._ While the humidity and general bogginess made the woods an ideal home for amphibians, they also made it reek. The smell brought back a lot of memories, which would have made Lucca much happier if they had been about the way to Frog's hovel instead of the way her clothes had stunk for days after each visit.

"I can't believe anyone would live here," Nadia said, trudging along behind her. "It's so omigodEW!"

Lucca turned to see that the final four syllables had been prompted by Nadia's sinking her right foot into a marshy patch. Grimacing, Nadia pulled herself free and stared at her toes as if she expected to see weeds sprouting between them.

Suppressing a grin, Lucca said, "You know, you really should find some better—"

"Shoes. I know." Nadia shuddered and shook her foot in a futile effort to dislodge the grime, then let out a long sigh and started walking again. "So how far are we from Frog's place?"

"I told you, I have no i—" Lucca cut herself off as the trees suddenly gave way to a clearing. Something flickered in her memory, and she called over her shoulder to Nadia, "Straight ahead this way. Under those bushes."

The bushes in question parted with a comforting rustle as Lucca worked her arms between them, revealing a makeshift trapdoor. Beneath it was a ladder that led down into what looked like an earthen oubliette. Had Frog ever felt the need to booby-trap his home? _More importantly, would he have if we hadn't come?_

"It's so sad," said Nadia. "Why would anyone want to live down there?"

Lucca put a finger to her lips, then started to climb down the ladder. If Frog had heard them, he would be concealed somewhere near the ceiling, waiting to get the drop on them. In another life, he had slid from aggression to welcome in a blink. There was no telling how he might react to less familiar intruders.

Bracing herself, Lucca reached the bottom and turned, putting on her best non-threatening face.

Nothing happened. As Lucca's eyes adjusted to the dim mix of candles and filtered sunlight, she discerned the outline of someone in a wooden chair, and a low voice croaked, "Who art thou?"

From somewhere high up the ladder, Nadia stifled a shriek, resulting in a muffled, high-pitched sound that Lucca was certain would raise Frog's defenses. Instead he gave only a quiet sigh and said, "Thou art human. A maiden, if mine eyes deceive me not. Didst thou lose thy way down these dark paths?"

"I came here looking for you, actually." Lucca weighed her next word, then decided that deep depression called for desperate measures. "Glenn."

During the ensuing silence, Nadia made her way to the bottom of the ladder, looked around for a place to wipe her hands, and settled for her pants. "Hi," she said, a little too brightly.

Frog's voice shook. "What devilry is this? The visage of my queen, and the barer of my shame? Begone!"

"Wait! No devilry!" It took Lucca a moment to realize that her vehemence was unnecessary; Frog hadn't even reached for his sword. Taking a deep, calming breath, she said, "This is Nadia. She looks like the queen because she's Leene's descendent. And I'm Lucca Ashtear, the super-genius your mother warned you about. We're time-travelers."

"Devilry and witchcraft," Frog murmured. "Nay, the guilt of a soul so burdened it hath sunk at last into madness. Wilt thou, too, haunt me?"

"Oh, for the love of..." Not quite certain what was being loved, Lucca trailed off into a sigh, crossed the room to Frog's chair, and struck him once on the head.

Frog's bulbous eyes blinked, then focused sharply on her. "Thou art material. If thou art Mystics come seeking vengeance, be thou apprised that though this knave contributed naught to your fall, still might his blade spill wicked blood."

"Wow, you sure are gloomy when you don't get to beat up on Magus." At his flinch, Lucca added, "Look, there used to be another reality where you got what you wanted. You're better than this."

Nadia nodded eagerly. "And we saved the world, and you helped save me when Leene disappeared and you had to get her but I showed up and made things weird." Despite Lucca's look, she continued, "And then there were cavemen. I bet we would've liked it."

Frog's gaze passed suspiciously from one girl to the other. "Mayhap thou art mad as well?"

"Nobody's mad here," said Lucca, "expect in the sense that I'm getting a little pissed off. You're stronger than this, and I can't stand to see you mope."

"I know this is kind of weird," added Nadia, "but Lucca says there used to be this other world where everything was better for us, so we're trying to get it back. And if you were all set to believe we were some kind of funny magic, you can believe that, too."

Lucca smiled. "Air-tight enough for me."

There was a long silence. Then, in a series of ponderous motions, Frog rose from his chair and stepped into the light. Nadia gasped, and even Lucca had to bite back a cry, although for different reasons.

It wasn't that he had degenerated in any dramatic fashion. Apparently not even despair could keep Frog from his training, and he at least went to the effort of patching the holes in his threadbare clothing. Rather, it was the summation of all the little changes—the slight stoop, the tatters in his cape, the sunkenness of his eyes—that told the story of cold hope and lost purpose. Frog might not have been inviting death per se, but he was leaving the back door unlocked and setting an extra place at dinner.

"Thou hast told me a tale," he said, indicating that his guests should seat themselves; "now shall I spin one for thee." Clearing his throat with an odd, amphibious noise, Frog returned to the chair at the far end of the table and said, "Once there lived a knight most noble and true, whose courage was unmatched in all the land. Before him evil itself did tremble, and even the vilest nightmare of hell fled. At his side was a lad, green and untried, who had naught to offer but fealty and devotion.

"And it came to pass that the golden knight set forth to cleanse the land of wickedness, and with him traveled the callow youth. Though the knight met the darkness unafraid, fortune deserted him at the moment of his greatest need. 'Tis true the lad remained at his side, yet the boy proved naught but a recreant. Nay, worse! He could not flee even to preserve himself at his dearest friend's command. And finding him unworthy of death, the darkness stripped from the wretch the shell of his humanity."

Lucca's fist hit the table. "That's not how it—"

"Pray let me finish my account, lass." Frog's eyes focused somewhere past her, as if he were reading his memories from the wall. "It came to pass that this beast, this less-than-man, had thoughts of redeeming what little honor he might by carrying on the quest of his beloved friend. Yet he met always with failure. During his vigil did his sovereign queen vanish, during his penance did his kingdom come nigh to ruin and his liege-lord fall, and in the depths of his despair was even the hope of vengeance plucked from him. There can be no honor for him now, not even an honorable end."

This time both of Lucca's hands hit the table. "Bullshit." Ignoring Nadia's increasingly frantic efforts to hush her, she said, "You're not even trying to change. You're just _wallowing_ in it."

"Excuse us," said Nadia, grabbing Lucca's arm and dragging her away from the table. "Okay," she whispered once they were out of earshot, "what the heck are you doing?"

With an indignant noise, Lucca pointed back at the table. "Did you even understand half of what he said?"

"Yes!" At Lucca's look, Nadia amended, "Most of it." The look persisted. "The words were really pretty."

Lucca sighed. "Point is, he's got himself convinced that everything was all his fault and that he doesn't even deserve a chance to make things better."

"But you're just making him feel worse." Nadia bit her lip, then turned and walked back to her seat, where she coughed for attention. "Look," she said, "things went really bad for you. But you just need a chance! In the better world, you saved Leene _and_ me, and you had a magic sword, and we all fought Magus together."

Frog sighed. "'Tis a fantasy, lass, and a cruel one with which to tempt the craven thou seest before thee." He paused, staring at his gloved hands. "Yet if thy tidings hide but a grain of truth... Pray, did our mission succeed?"

Lucca grinned. "We kicked his ass."

"We can show you something, too," said Nadia. "There's this place in Truce Canyon where Lucca waves her magic wand—"

"Gate Key—"

"—around, and you can go the present!" Nadia looked thoughtful. "Um, I guess it's the future for you. We have running water."

Frog's expression indicated that he had given up trying to make sense of her. "I am regaled with talk of wonders," he said, turning away, "yet I have brought only darkness and dishonor to all whom I pledged to serve. Pray leave me."

Lucca's temper snapped. "That box in the corner has the hilt of the Masamune in it, which broke off when Magus killed Cyrus and made you green. In my timeline, we fixed the sword for you and got back the medal you dropped in a fit of drunken depression, and then we all had a merry old time getting through Magus's pretentiously decorated castle." When Frog remained silent, she added, "You haven't got a bellybutton."

He shook his head. "Whether thy words be true or false means naught to me. 'Tis mine own dishonor that damns me, and though thou may offer proof beyond reproach, there is naught that can efface the stain of my guilt."

"That's not true!" Lucca couldn't stop her voice from rising. "Just because it would have happened this way without us doesn't mean this is how it's supposed to be! This isn't who you really are!"

Nadia's hand rested on her shoulder. "Lucca—"

She pulled away and took a deep, calming breath. "It doesn't matter." Then again, more firmly: "It doesn't matter. We want you to help us make the world better again, and if you can't do that for yourself, maybe you could at least do it for your king. Or your queen. Or Cyrus."

There was a protracted silence, during which even Nadia seemed to be holding her breath. At last Frog said, "Mayhap there be honor enough yet in this wretched carcass to feel the sting of shame. Yet 'tis o'ermuch for mine heart to comprehend, and I must ponder this turn of events. Pray leave me to my contemplation."

Lucca clenched her fists. "What do you want? A day? A week? We don't have time!" A nightmare flashed through her brain, of Crono's face with the eyes gouged out. "You don't understand," she said, babbling to keep her imagination at bay. "There isn't time. There really isn't time."

"Thank you," said Nadia, with a cheerfulness that very nearly didn't sound forced. "We'll come back." Grabbing Lucca by the wrist, she headed for the ladder.

"There isn't time," Lucca insisted, but she sighed and climbed out of the hovel. The sting in her eyes she attributed to the swamp vapors; she felt she'd failed enough today without adding "public hysteria" to the list.

Nadia put both hands on Lucca's shoulders and gave her friend a firm look. "Lucca. Calm. Down. You can't rush him. This is a pretty big thing to throw at somebody."

The irony of being told to calm down by Guardia's princess gave Lucca the motivation she needed to get her thoughts on track. "Right," she said, wriggling out of Nadia's grip. "I know. It's just frustrating to see him like that." She took a deep breath and started walking back toward Sandorino. "And it kind of of limits our options."

Nadia followed. "Well, let's see. Your other friends were, um, a cavewoman. That would make four, if Frog's okay when we come back."

Lucca shook her head. "There's no Gate to the prehistoric era that we can reach. It only connected to the Dark Ages and the End of Time." Funny how clear that was in her mind, probably because of the trouble they'd had getting back into Zeal.

 

_Bingo._

 

Quickening her pace, Lucca said, "New plan. This is kind of a long shot, but Belthasar might still be alive in this world."

"Who?"

"Inventor of the Epoch. Lives in the—" _and here's the less fun part_— "future." A low-level panic played in Lucca's head, centering on the paradox in the forest. _Breathe,_ she told herself. _Focus. Don't obsess._

Nadia cleared her throat. "Um, are we supposed to be going to Porre?"

Gritting her teeth, Lucca turned north. Nadia didn't ask any further questions, and they arrived in silence, still stinking of the Cursed Woods, at the bridge.

"Ah," said the detachment's leader, "it's _them_ again."

"Everyone says that," muttered the soldier nearest him, "but technically the complement ought to be in the nominative—"

As the leader smacked him on the helmet, Nadia took the opportunity to chirp, "Yes, we had a lovely visit with our uncle," and awkwardness once again eased them past the checkpoint.

"You're good," Lucca said once they were out of earshot.

Nadia grinned. "Soldiers're easy. I used to run rings around the ones back home."

"Once again, I fear for our kingdom's security."

As they began to trace their path back to Truce Canyon, Nadia said, "If we can stop by your house for showers, I'll tell you another story."

"With a happy ending?"

"With a loofah?"

"I think I can swing that."

"You're on."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to **Myshu** for picking up the slack where spellcheck failed me.

Introducing Nadia would have meant hours of wasted time and unconvincing explanations, so Lucca made certain that her parents were both asleep before sneaking Nadia upstairs and into the bathroom. True to her word, Nadia had provided an upbeat story about the time she slipped into the royal stables and attempted to teach herself to ride a horse, and Lucca, in turn, had found something with loofah-like qualities lurking in the cupboard.

Once they had each managed to scrub the Cursed Woods out of their skin, Nadia sniffed her clothing with exaggerated disgust. "Don't suppose we have time for laundry, huh?"

"They'd just get filthy again," Lucca said, toweling her hair dry. "Adventuring is stinky business."

"Ooh, that gives me an idea." Nadia's eyes sparkled. "Someday I'll open up a bunch of spas for heroes. One free massage every time you save the world!"

Lucca grinned. "I think this is the exhaustion talking, but that almost sounds like a good idea."

"You can be a manager."

"Only if I get dibs on the evil sewer location."

"Yuck. Be my guest."

Still smiling, Lucca gave her hair a final wring before donning her helmet. "Well, I'm set. Try to keep it down on the way out."

Nadia caught her arm before she opened the bathroom door. "You're just going to leave? Just like that?"

"How else _could_ I leave? 'Bye Mom and Dad, I'm off to rewrite history, don't hold dinner'?"

Nadia rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant. It's just that..." She hesitated, then finished, "You _like_ your parents."

Biting her lip, Lucca turned the knob. "They're not really my parents."

They stole out of the house in silence, but Nadia was clearly more than a little perturbed, and Lucca didn't know how to explain herself. How much of any of them was real? Lucca herself was a collection of fragments from two realities that weren't and one that shouldn't have been. And "should" was a tricky word. Even thinking it left a strange taste in her mouth, an eye-watering mix of menthol and cayenne.

The path to Guardia Forest was deserted under the moonlight. The princess had only been missing for two days, which all of Lucca's memories agreed wasn't long enough for the soldiers to be called in. But there was no sense being reckless, and the two girls stole softly through the shadows at the forest's edge.

"I remember this one," Lucca whispered as they came to the path that led to the castle. "Crono and I used to sneak out to play here, and I can remember which clearing had the Gate in it."

Nadia cheered quietly.

As they picked their way to their destination, taking care to avoid the forest's sleeping denizens, Lucca tried to pretend that Nadia would still be smiling when they stepped out of the Gate. Maybe if the timestream was in so much upheaval already, the path of least resistance would be to leave the future repaired. It only seemed fair that if Crono had to vanish, he could take Lavos with him.

But there were two kinds of "fair," one that depended upon an impossible, disputable balance and another that played out beneath the superficial chaos of actions and reactions. They mixed poorly.

"Brace yourself," Lucca said as she keyed in the sequence to open the portal. It was difficult to say whom she was addressing.

One neon rush later, she was picking herself up from the floor of Bangor Dome, hoping her knees didn't bruise from their encounter with the cold steel. Nadia landed beside her in a cloud of dust.

"Ow," said Nadia, making a cursory effort to brush herself off. "I think I liked the grass better." Her eyes widened as she took in her surroundings. "Is this—"

"What it all comes down to." Lucca's gaze lingered on the door at the back of the room, where the crest of Zeal glowed through the haze. "There's nothing in here. We may as well get going."

Long ago, Crono had been the first one out, slipping through the gap where the automatic door gaped eternally open. Marle had followed, and Lucca had come only when she heard the confused and rather distressed noises coming from outside. Her attention had been focused on the door's design, the only luminescence in the gloom, and she had been enraptured by thoughts of what high technology had brought such a thing to pass.

It was a strange memory to keep so vivid. Perhaps her brain clung to it as a prime example of her ability to jump to the wrong conclusions, but Lucca hardly felt that she could be blamed for overlooking the possibility of magic.

With a sigh, she turned and followed Crono's nonexistent footprints outside, hating that she couldn't recall his shoe size. The wind scratched her as she stepped clear of the wreckage.

And then it was in front of her, cold and stark and the color of ashes, ten thousand nightmares coalescing into a reality that no amount of waking could erase. It had never left her, hiding as it did inside the part of her that worried about keeping the timeline intact. She had never managed to forget that every life on the planet dangled from threads as thin as a boy running into a girl, or a sapling thriving in a desert.

"No." Nadia's voice was little more than a whimper, and Lucca glanced back to see her shaking her head wildly in the direction that had once led to Guardia Castle. "No way. This..."

"Is why we fought."

If she had known that she wouldn't ever work up the nerve to visit the new future, Lucca would have taken longer fetching Doan for the Moonlight Parade. She had been in a hurry, of course, to set everything in place before Crono awoke the next day, but surely she could have taken a moment in her sleepless night to bask in the technology gleaming brighter than the stars. And gleaming so strangely...

At the time Lucca had been willing to attribute the phantasmic quality of the world to the night sky and her own giddiness, but now she wondered if she had caught the future in a state of flux. As she led Doan outside to the Epoch, flashes of barren land and ruined buildings had jumped into her peripheral vision and disappeared just as abruptly when she turned to look at them. Whatever force kept the universe from imploding under the weight of its own impossibility had been strained.

And Doan had been so confused. As the timestream struggled with the sudden influx of paradox, he had vacillated between memories, as perplexed by the idea of huddling in rags as by the sight of the domed city around him. He remembered Lucca, and he wanted to know who was pulling himself out of his home; he thanked her again for feeding his people, and he demanded an explanation before he called the police. But once she'd gotten him back to 1000 AD, he'd settled down and asked after the health of Crono and Marle. And he'd been wearing rags.

Looking back on it, she'd probably taken away the part of Doan that belonged to the ruined future and left the rest of him wondering why he was standing outside in the middle of the night. And her Doan had no doubt vanished into impossibility when he stepped through the Gate, just like—

Lucca shook her head and turned back to Nadia, who was still staring horror-struck at the landscape, her ponytail whipping in the dusty wind.

"This can't be real," she said at last. "This can't be the way the world ends..."

"With a bang and a whimper." Lucca's voice was steady, but she felt as if a giant fist were crushing her chest. She frowned and drew her gun. "Keep your guard up. If it's moving, it wants to kill you."

Nadia walked beside her, shivering. "It's just not right. Back home everyone's playing outside, and having picnics, and—and cutting the crusts off sandwiches. The world can't end when people are cutting the crusts off sandwiches. Maybe if everyone was fighting, and there were big dark clouds everywhere, and some old man in a funny hat kept yelling things in an angry old man voice—"

A sharp metallic gleam scurried across the ground toward them. Before Lucca could fire, a red beam cut through the air, singing Nadia's ponytail. There was a yelp, followed by a crossbow quarrel embedding itself in the robot's processor and sending up a colorful shower of sparks.

"What on earth was that?" Nadia asked after a beat.

Lucca peered at it and shrugged. "Low-level security droid. Little strange to see one outside." She paused. "I hate this, you know. It's not their fault. They just do what they're programmed to." Remembering that she was talking to someone without any technological background, she added, "It's like if I threw a baseball at you. It wouldn't be the ball's fault if you got a lump on your head."

Nadia frowned. "So who's throwing the baseball at us? And why do they have to put lasers on it?"

"Let's just forget the metaphor," Lucca said, resuming their journey north. "Thing is, I think back to when we first found Robo, and sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't been able to reprogram him. And we destroyed a lot of other R-series robots, and sometimes I wonder if I could have done something, but..." She trailed off with a sigh. "I don't know. Sometimes I wonder where the hell I get off making all these decisions."

There was a short silence.

"You didn't answer my question," Nadia said.

"About the lasers?"

"About who's throwing the ball."

Lucca frowned. "Big robotic overmind. Wants to wipe out humanity. Kind of hoping we don't run into it."

"Yikes. Me too." Nadia looked around at the wasted countryside, then asked, "Um, where _is_ humanity?"

There was no point in taking her to Trann Dome. Assuming the tattered remnants of the human race had even survived another year of starvation and marauding robots, they would be in no shape to do anything but upset Nadia further. The Enertron was tempting, but Lucca couldn't handle seeing any more faces on the damage she'd done.

"Hiding," she replied at last. "There are extermination units all over the place."

Nadia shuddered. "You know what I like about the present? There's nothing trying to kill me. Well, except those monsters in the forest, but half the time they just run away. And none of them have lasers."

The monologue showed signs of continuing, but Lucca held up a hand as they reached the threshold to Lab 16. _Okay, think. Rats, mutants, and... was this the place with Bikeboy?_ As her mind continued to wander down a pothole-ridden lane, Lucca turned to Nadia and said, "If you see anything that looks like a puddle with a nasty grin, yell. Weapons can't touch them. And if you hear anyone say, 'The Man,' prepare to be annoyed."

Nadia blinked. "Should I ask?"

"Better not. That hair will probably be the one thing I never forget."

 

"The hair," panted Nadia, reloading her crossbow as more arachnoid robots skittered out of the shadows, "has got to be better than this."

Lucca was half-inclined to agree. Although her fire magic could cut through the mutants as if they were ice sculptures, every use of it reminded her of how long it had been since she'd slept. It didn't help that she caught herself trying to sear every aspect of the spells into her memory, in case the workings of paradox tried to snatch them away next.

"I don't think it used to be this bad," Lucca called over the din. A fireball shot from her palm to a malicious lump of goo, temporarily winding her. Once she'd gotten her breath back, she added, "I think we wandered into a warzone. The mutants and the machines aren't exactly working together here."

 

_And I don't want to think about why the Mother Brain would start targeting non-human organics._

 

Nadia shrieked, and Lucca whirled around to see that she had run out of arrows and was using her crossbow as a club to beat the robots away. "Great! So let's wander _out_!"

"I think we're near the end." Lucca's gaze fell on a surprisingly familiar pile of wreckage, and with a near-audible click, the layout of the lab came together in her brain. Lucca grabbed Nadia by the wrist and yanked her around a corner into a bottleneck. "This way," she said, pushing the princess toward an apparent dead end. "Crawl through the hole in the wall. I'll catch up."

"But you—"

"Can make sure they don't follow. Run!" As Nadia reluctantly sprinted toward the exit, Lucca prepared another wave of fire for the pursuing robots.

The next thing she was aware of was the buckling of her knees, followed by her awkward collapse against the nearest wall. A matchhead's worth of flame fizzled out in the air. Before Lucca could call up the strength to try again, a red beam grazed her shoulder.

Suddenly she was jerked back, and her gun hit her elbow as it was pulled from its holster. Shots peppered the area with erratic menace.

"C'mon, Lucca, let's get out of here!" One of Nadia's blasts managed to short out the foremost robot, resulting in enough of a roadblock to delay the rest.

Lucca struggled to her feet with Nadia's help. "Thanks," she managed, wincing as they rushed together toward the exit. "Guess I'm getting a little ti—"

A laser pierced the air overhead, leaving a red-hot patch on the wall. With a yelp, Nadia shoved Lucca through the narrow gap and scrambled after her.

"They'll fit through there, won't they?" Nadia looked skyward in a near-panic, as if expecting salvation to fall from the heavens.

"Hang on." Gritting her teeth, Lucca knelt and hovered her hands over the edges of the gap, focusing whatever energy she could into her palms. _The future sucks. Life sucks. Crono's gone, and right now it's all this wall's fault._ Heat tugged at her skin as the steel began to glow, warping itself until the exit became a hole scarcely large enough to accommodate a finger.

"There," she panted, "I think that worked." Her helmet thunked against the ground as she fell over backward.

Nadia's face appeared in her field of vision. "Okay, you're getting some sleep _now_, little lady."

"You sound like my mom." Lucca giggled, but it came out as more of a hiccup.

"I think that last one fried your brain," said Nadia, pulling her up and returning the gun to its holster. Lucca swayed on her feet. "Isn't there anywhere safe we can go?"

All the giddiness drained out of Lucca's exhaustion. _So we can stay out here and die, or we can try the sewers and die, or we can go to Arris Dome and probably die. Time travel's just a non-stop barrel of laughing fish._ Frowning inwardly at what her brain had done to the trope, Lucca said, "There used to be. But a lot happens in a year." She took a step, stumbled, and was caught by Nadia before she could end up face-first in the dust.

"Here." Nadia draped Lucca's arm over her shoulders. "I know you have this weird idea about doing everything yourself, but let me help, okay?"

Lucca managed to return her smile, and they set off together across the barren landscape.

 

Arris Dome showed no signs of life from the outside, which could mean, logically, that the residents were alive and hiding quietly, that they had all died in the interim, that the robots had taken over and were lying in wait, or that Lucca just couldn't keep her eyes focused long enough to recognize any hints of habitation. Broken glass crunched under her feet as Nadia half-carried her to the entrance.

They paused at the threshold. "Do you think it's safe?" Nadia asked.

Lucca shrugged as much as she could manage. "If there are any killer robots in there, they've heard us coming, and they'd just mow us down if we tried to run. And I wouldn't be saying this out loud if I weren't dead on my feet."

Nadia winced. "Um, can we not say the d-word right now?"

"Down?" Lucca grinned inanely as they began to make their way inside. "Dominoes? Division? Not afraid of a little long division, are you?"

"Very funny." Nadia gave her a stern look that didn't quite take. "You just better not be like this once you're rested up. You're supposed to be the brains of this operation."

"I _am_ the brains. Girl genius. Only blows up two inventions a week, and has even odds on saving or destroying the world."

Lucca thought she might have added more, but found herself coughing on the stale air inside the Dome. A thick layer of dust lay unbroken on the floor. In the absolute silence, the girls' breaths echoed from the steel walls.

"Dammit." Lucca sank straight through sobriety to depression. "There's no one here."

Nadia blinked. "But I thought we didn't _want_ to find any robots."

"It's not that." Lucca exhaled on the wall, scattering dirty specters through the air. "There used to be people here. Your descendants, actu—" Something seized up in her chest, and the sentence went unfinished. "Never mind."

Bracing herself against the wall, Lucca made her way forward to peer around the corner. She saw nothing but dimly lit debris. "On the bright side," she added, "I don't think anyone died here recently. No blood or collateral damage. Maybe they all went into hiding a long time ago."

"It's still horrible." Nadia was using her resolute voice, the one that indicated a quasi-suicidal call to action was on its way. "Lucca, we have to do something about this! We have to find everyone and get them a new home, or at least get all the dust out of here, and then we have to find the big baseball mind-thing and show it who's boss!"

The outline of the Enertron was just visible in the corner, covered by a layer of gray dirt. After taking a step toward it and finding herself leaning on Nadia again, Lucca replied, "We _are_ doing something about it. Changing history, remember? Lavos goes poof, and so does all this."

"It still isn't right." Nadia grunted as she got Lucca past a set of steps. "And, um, where are we going?"

"Funny thing in the corner."

"Gotcha." Once they had made their way across the oddly designed walkways, Nadia said, "What I meant was, these people still matter. Even if we make it so this never happens..."

Not wanting to follow that line of thought, Lucca fumbled her hand down the side of the Enertron until she found the release button. _So is it good that I got the general area right, or bad that I didn't hit it right off the bat?_ Those thoughts didn't go anywhere appealing, either, so Lucca positioned herself inside the device, instinctively holding her breath as the lid snapped shut over her.

It was time-elapsed dreaming. It was empathy for a waterfall. It was intravenous coffee. Even if her memories of the Enertron had been flawless, Lucca doubted that the rush would have been diminished. When the cover sprang open, she all but bounded out.

Nadia raised her eyebrows and gave Lucca a curious poke. "So is that some kind of magic sleeping machine?"

"It's not magic." Lucca patted the Enertron almost affectionately. "Not showy enough, remember? It's pure science."

"And it works?"

"Science always works."

Nadia grinned. "Good, 'cause it looks like fun. My turn!"

Once again the machine whirred through its function, and Nadia bounced out with a cheer that fell into a frown. "That reminds me. I'm kinda hungry."

"It does that, yeah." Lucca let her gaze wander over the trail they'd left in the dust, an oddly tight feeling in her throat. _Metaphors. Bah._ "And we should probably get going now. No sense sticking around."

As they walked back to the entrance, the metal floor clanging beneath them, Lucca tried to keep herself from staring at the dirty ladder leading to the basement. But her thoughts ventured where her gaze feared to tread.

Once upon a time, everything had happened for a reason. There were entities and forces at work, throwing three people whose combined ages fell short of a half-century deep into the workings of history. They were little wrenches in very big gears, even if that wasn't quite the way they liked to phrase it.

If Lucca had believed that then, she sure as hell didn't now.

The events in the basement were still sharp in her mind, everything from chasing the not-quite-statuesque rat to the wild oath they'd taken to save the world. "It was a stroke of luck that we were sent here through that Gate," she'd said, because luck had nothing to do with destiny and was just a convenient word for one thing happening after another, without meaning or God or the acerbic taste of "supposed."

 

_Once upon a time, we thought we knew how to play God._

 

Nadia's hand was waving in front of her face. "Lucca? You're spacing again."

"Sorry."

They had reached the surface again, where intermittent lightning flashed too far away for them to hear the thunder. Lucca brushed the grit off her glasses. "Anyway, our next stop is the sewer south of here."

"You have no idea how much I hoped you were kidding about the evil sewer."

"It's not really evil so much as annoying." Frowning, Lucca kicked a rock and added, "At least, that's how it was last time. The future's not cooperating with me."

Nadia looked thoughtful, then reached over and snatched Lucca's gun. "I'm out of ammo!" she protested when an effort was made to reclaim it. "And you're Fire Goddess Lucca! I need this more than you do!"

Lucca stopped her offensive and smirked. "Your use of 'goddess' appeases the mighty Lucca. She will allow you the use of her holy weapon provided that you improve your aim."

"Hey, I hit a robot." Grinning, Nadia struck a pose and affected a deep voice. "Bad guys, beware! Detective Nadia is on the case!"

"_And_ provided you cut that out."

"Spoilsport."

 

Lucca had been expecting megalomaniacal caterpillars. Marauding robots, while less welcome, wouldn't have been a surprise.

But for the sewer to be completely empty took her off-guard.

"There used to be frogs here," she said, waving her hand to indicate the area. "And fish-things. And bugs." As they crossed the area that had once been full of traps, Lucca added, "Not that I'm complaining."

 

_Not that I'm thinking about what happened to them, either._

 

"This is really spooky," Nadia remarked as they came near the end the sewer. "I kind of wish something would jump out at us. Well, something not a robot."

Lucca started to make a joke about her just wanting to use the gun, but the circumstances made it difficult to find the right tone. Was there any life left at all, aside from a smattering of mutants? The lack of corpses in Arris Dome offered the hope that humanity had found somewhere safer to hide, but the memory of the human processing plant was burned into Lucca's brain—the huddled bodies, the screaming, the gut-twisting knowledge that people were dying constantly, their lives ripped away as their would-be rescuers made wrong turns and puzzled over the security system.

Someone, perhaps Crono, had asked Lucca if she was okay after seeing it, and she had replied, "You can't save everyone." It was trite and stupid, even if it was true. It was also the only way to sleep at night, because she couldn't figure out how Marle coped and she didn't want any part of how Magus did.

As she and Nadia climbed out of the sewers and back to the wind-scourged surface, Lucca tried to focus her vision southward and ignore the mountain that jutted out of the earth like an exposed bone. Nadia didn't.

"Lucca, what _is_ that thing?"

"Death Peak. Almost as much fun to climb as it looks." Despite herself, Lucca found her gaze turning eastward as she walked. "It's where we got Crono back."

With a little shiver, Nadia said, "Kind of a creepy place for a miracle."

Science had nothing to do with miracles, and Lucca had always come down on its side. While the others had considered Death Peak primarily as an icy lump of spiritual hardship, she was busy noticing that it occupied very nearly the same area as Melchoir's hut, Magus's castle, the Black Omen, and Lavos's point of impact. If Death Peak was a hotspot for temporal mojo, it was probably by virtue of location.

Of course, no one, not even Lucca, had been terribly interested in discussing the place after Crono had been saved. There was always the risk that a miracle would evanesce under scrutiny.

"It's a creepy place for anything," Lucca replied at last.

There was a pause, after which Nadia ran to catch up with her. "So, um, this Bell Jar guy—"

"Belthasar."

"Right, him. He's not a robot or a giant frog or anything, is he?"

Despite everything, Lucca felt the corners of her mouth twitch upward. "We were kind of a weird group, weren't we? He's a pretty much your standard old man, though. Just crazy and probably dead."

Nadia snapped her fingers. "Darn," she said playfully. "And here I was hoping he was a cute young candymaker."

Lucca quirked an eyebrow. "I already told you he's the guy who invented our time machine."

"Well, if there are gingerbread _houses_—"

"Stop right there."

As they came to the entrance to the Keeper's Dome, Lucca tried to formulate a proper introduction. Belthasar had devoted decades to the study of time travel, so at least he would have no trouble believing the basics of her story. And sunken as he was into depression, he would most likely be willing to help restore a brighter timeline. Nothing to worry about.

 

_Oh, who am I kidding? If he's even alive, he's just going to be talking to people who aren't there._

 

"Um, one more thing," said Nadia as they crossed the threshold. "Is he crazy as in old-man rambly or crazy as in lasers?"

Before Lucca could answer, they came around the corner of a dust-laden computer and found the area empty except for a snoring Nu. _Dammit._

Nadia gave Lucca an accusing look. "You said he was human."

"He was. That's just his Nu." Ignoring Nadia's immediate question, Lucca walked over to the creature and poked it in the chest.

The Nu awoke with a start and automatically began to speak. "The professor's programming was, in a sense, his own eulogy. Soon, I, too, will be able to sleep—"

"Good for you," Lucca said. "So Belthasar's not hiding anywhere around here, is he?" When the Nu only gave her the blank, unblinking stare that made its species so infuriating, she added, "He put his memories in you. Don't play dumb."

The Nu shrugged. "The professor gave me only specific processes that emulate his mind. For example..." The creature trailed off, staring vacantly ahead. "Program error."

Sensing that she was in for a struggle, Lucca muttered to herself and started to dig through her knapsack in search of Nu-interrogating inspiration. The process was interrupted by Nadia's saying, "Aww, you're the first cute thing I've seen all day! Do you have a name?"

There was a long pause. "I am Nu."

"They're like organic appliances," Lucca said without looking up. "If your toaster started hiding the bread and demanding that you scratch its back, you wouldn't give it a—" She cut off and knit her brow. "Actually, yes, you would. Never mind."

"I named everything in the kitchen when I was four. The toaster was Mr. Brownbread."

"Better than calling it 'Mom,' I guess." Realization crashed in, and Lucca pinched the bridge of her nose. "Wow. That was incredibly tactless of me."

"Sort of, yeah. But it's been a pretty rough day." When Lucca glanced up, Nadia give her a small smile before turning to pet the Nu. "Hey, what's all that stuff?"

Lucca followed her line of sight to the consoles beneath the defunct computers, upon which were stacks of papers. As she made her way over to them, the Nu said, "The professor left a great deal of work behind. I have organized it as per my instructions, nu."

_Jackpot_. As Nadia tousled the Nu's hair, Lucca began to rifle through the notes. Apparently Belthasar had put enough of himself into the Nu to let the creature sort efficiently, keeping most of the mad ravings of his final days segregated from the actual data and scientific notes. Unfortunately, the majority of the papers fell into the former category. As Lucca thumbed through a set of reports on mutant lifeforms, she wondered how much of a headache her devoted followers would one day have from compiling her work. _Not a chance. I'll be published long before I die._

A pleasant fantasy of her twenty-seventh acceptance speech was interrupted when Lucca's elbow knocked several pages from the one of the brain-scrambled stacks to the floor. As she bent to retrieve them, a name caught her eye and rattled something in her memory. Lucca took her notebook out of her bag and began to skim.

The reference lay buried in the tale of Crono's restoration: "Then Belthasar sent us to get a clone/doll from Norstein Bekkler, the Tent of Horrors guy at the Millennial Fair." A few neglected gears began to turn, and Lucca managed to call up a fuzzy image of a disembodied head and its free-floating hands, along with her own conclusion that he was either a Mystic or a convincing optical illusion. She could also recall, with surprising clarity, watching Ayla mimic the clone as part of Bekkler's deal.

So what was a carnival freak doing in a document written more than a thousand years later? There wasn't even any context; the name was part of an unlabeled list, sandwiched between "shells" and "dreams."

Shrugging, Lucca slipped the paper into her notebook and went back to searching for data about the Wings of Time. She had begun to worry that all of Belthasar's work on the machine qualified as insane scribblings when a curious sheet turned up underneath a stack of studies on the weather.

"Energy sources" was written at the top, then underlined several times, perhaps when Belthasar had kept his pen moving idly as he thought. Lucca was quite familiar with the practice, although she was more of a geometric doodler, as evidenced by margins full of rectangular and triangular prisms. Taban preferred stars. But in the end it was all the same; the name of the game was focus, keeping the brain from flying away into a daydream. Everything came down to focus, down through worlds and continents and cities and houses to a girl diving into a vast red sea.

_So focus already._ Brushing her thoughts aside, Lucca turned her attention back to the list.

The first entry was "Lavos," underlined often and darkly. Across the page from it was "Planet," and a line with a question mark in the center connected the two. An near-illegible scrawl beneath it seemed to say, "DS born but Lavos spawn. Nu?"

Every other entry on the list had the air of existing only for the sake of completion, from "atomic" to "solar."

Turning the paper over revealed a nightmare of intersecting lines and terrible handwriting, in which the only words immediately clear were "WHO CONTROLS TIME?" When she squinted, Lucca saw that "outside" had been scribbled repeatedly around the question, forming a shaky border.

_And why is this not filed with the crazy papers?_ Sighing, she turned to the Nu, which was enjoying a backscratch courtesy of Nadia, and said, "Can you read this?"

The Nu turned languidly to peer at the sheet. "Program error."

"Don't you dare." Fuming, Lucca flipped through her notebook until she found what she was looking for. "See?" she said, pointing at her writing. "You're supposed to be informative. And you should know what this means."

"I think he's asleep," said Nadia.

Lucca's boot connected with the Nu's backside with more force than was probably necessary. Starting, the creature blinked and gave her a baleful look.

"Program error," it insisted.

"Yeah, right. And what error would that be?"

Sidling away from her, the Nu replied, "Error 124N—Physical abuse of Nu. Further interaction prohibited. Good night."

As the creature began to snore, Nadia said, "He reminds me of one of the castle guards. I think I'll call him 'Ernie.'"

"I was going to go with 'Big Blue Bastard,' but whatever works." Lucca frowned and wiped her glasses with her scarf. "This is driving me nuts. I'm going to keep looking through Belthasar's notes, but I don't know if I'll find much else about time travel that isn't written in crazy-talk. He must have wanted to keep his work from falling into the wrong hands."

Nadia pouted. "_We're_ not the wrong hands."

"Yeah, tell that to Ernie."

As Lucca glared at the indecipherable paper in her hand, her peripheral vision caught Nadia peering around the consoles. "Where would he hide a time machine?" the princess wondered aloud. Before Lucca could answer, she added, "Hey, what's that funny glowing thing in the back?"

"The door to the time machine. But we can't open it." Lucca grabbed Nadia's arm before she could dash off to try regardless. "Really, we can't. We'd have to supercharge something made of Dreamstone, and there's no way we have the energy for that. Last time, we had to use a direct conduit to Lavos."

Nadia shook her head. "But we can't just give up! We came all this way, and there has to be something more!" She paused, clasping her hands behind her back. "Or someone."

It took Lucca a moment to follow her meaning. "But we—he's probably not even—it's too far to—" Taking a deep breath, she tried to thread her thoughts back together. "It's just, well, the odds are so slim, and I—if he's not, I—"

 

_There's no way. It's been too long. But he was there for three centuries already, and how are you ever going to sleep again if all your dreams begin with "what if"?_

 

Pushing her glasses up, Lucca managed a lopsided smile and said, "But you gotta try, right?"


	6. Chapter 6

Skimming through the rest of Belthasar's research was difficult with so many worries competing for her attention, but Lucca managed to find a few pages of formulas and data that she thought she could use in conjunction with her own work. If she could have set aside a week for tinkering and calculating at home, she almost would have been excited.

Nadia, in the meantime, was amusing herself by reading selections from one of Belthasar's many treatises on the Nu in different voices. "You know," she said as the material began to wear thin, "I used to want to have my own radio show. _Princess Nadia's Adventures_, or something. Of course, when I was a kid, I didn't really get that those weren't real superheroes. I liked to pretend they were recording stuff that was really happening."

There was a little tug in Lucca's brain, and she looked up with a frown.

"I'm sorry," said Nadia. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, it's just..." Lucca set down the papers she'd been examining. "When Crono and I were kids, I used to go to his house every Saturday morning so we could listen to the radio shows together. My family had a better radio, see, but his mom made better pancakes. And then we'd run around outside pretending we were the characters."

Nadia smiled. "Sounds like fun."

"I'll bet it was. But I only know about it because I mentioned it in my notebook. All I can remember is sitting in my bedroom with the curtains drawn, listening to all those fantastic stories about heroes and wishing I had someone to play make-believe with." Letting out a long breath, Lucca tapped her fingers against the console. "I think it's changing me."

"Well, I won't let it." When Lucca turned, Nadia had her jaw set in a way that indicated the fundamental truths of reality were in for a surprise. "I mean it. If you try to go crazy on me, I won't let you."

"And the funny part? I really do appreciate that." Slipping the last of the coherent notes into her knapsack, Lucca added, "We might as well go. There's nothing else here."

Nadia nodded and got to her feet. "Yeah, I guess Ernie was kind of a bust."

"Caution!"

Lucca spun at the sound, catching sight of the Nu's wild eyes as it said, "The Time Axis is out of order." Then the creature blinked once, placidly, before falling back asleep.

"Well, you don't say," she muttered, heading for the door.

"What's a time axis?" asked Nadia.

"I think it's the giant pole rammed up Ernie's butt."

"No, seriously."

Lucca shrugged as she made her way outside. "It's either an imaginary line through history, or else just another name for the x axis when you're graphing the velocity of a killer baseball."

"I don't think you're being serious yet."

"You've got my gun. This is the only stress relief I have left."

The sewer was as empty on the return trip as it had been on the first, although the silence made Lucca jumpier than it had before. _There should be rats,_ she thought, trying to control her breathing after mistaking reflections on the murky water for a pair of eyes. _There are always rats. What's the point in being a rat if you can't make it a measly three hundred years after the apocalypse?_

The next thought came in a white hot flash: _There were supposed to be rats in Lab 16, too._

She acted on instinct. As Nadia reached for the ladder leading back to the surface, Lucca leapt forward and tackled her.

"Ow! Hey!" Wincing, Nadia rubbed her elbow where it had smacked against the floor. "What was—"

"Just listen for a minute." As Nadia complied, a bit sulkily, Lucca strained her ears against the silence. She could just make out the slight hum of the fluorescent lights, keeping the sewer bright in a way that should have set off alarm bells before. Apparently Lucca had to be working her way to an emotional meltdown before she could keep herself alert. _Hello, dysfunction._

Nadia frowned. "I don't hear anything."

"Except the lights." Pointing at the ceiling, Lucca said, "The robots must be in control of the power grid by now. Why keep this place turned on? Why was there still electricity for the Enertron in Arris Dome?"

"The same reason I leave the water running when I brush my teeth?"

Lucca paused. "Actually, that's not a bad comparison. See, I'm pretty sure they keep everything going because this is their territory. They own this place."

With a nervous glance at the ladder, Nadia scooted back against the wall and gripped the gun. "You don't mean there are robots hiding here?"

"Just the opposite. There are no guards here. Nothing. And it's still empty. It must have been... secured." The word almost caught in Lucca's throat. "I'm betting nothing's supposed to be able to pass through the labs."

Nadia shivered. "But what about Ernie? He's—"

"A Nu." Lucca shrugged and added, "Maybe the robots just don't care, or else my delightfully vivid memory of catching a headbutt with my stomach is a good indicator of how tough a Nu can be. Or maybe not even machines want to hang around Death Peak."

There was a soft rapping sound. Nadia yelped and fired a wild shot into the water, splashing it over the edge of the floor.

"That was you," Lucca said. "You were tapping your foot." As Nadia blushed, she continued, "Anyway, a whole pack of droids watched us get through the lab. They know we don't have anywhere else to go. We're—" _not the last human beings, not the last human beings_— "targets." _Gee, that's so much better._

Nadia shuddered again. "I really, really don't like the future. Have I mentioned that yet?"

"I hear you. And we need a new plan." Trying halfheartedly to convince herself that she didn't have any ulterior motives, Lucca said, "It'll be hard enough just returning to the Gate. There's no way we'd make it all the way east and back again."

"Hang on! You're just going to give up on Robo?" Nadia's words cut like scalpels. "I thought we were at at least going to try! What if he's—"

"What if, what if, what _if_?" The last word was almost a scream, and Lucca struggled to lower her voice as she got to her feet. "I already erased him, remember? What else can I do? I say I'm going to fix this, and I'm going to get rid of it, and it won't matter—but it still won't be okay, because _nothing_ is ever going to be completely okay. There's always going to be something wrong, and I can't do a damn thing about it."

As Nadia tried to protest, Lucca turned and gripped one of the lower rungs of the ladder until her knuckles went white. _So what does matter? Where'd we put the line between "We can't save everyone" and "Here's who we won't"?_

"Lucca, just..." Nadia's hand rested on her shoulder. "Just have a little faith, okay?"

"You know, that's actually what got me into this mess in the first place." Shaking her head, Lucca began to climb, saying, "Follow me and keep your eyes peeled. We'll try to follow the coast around the lab."

"No."

Wincing, Lucca stopped her ascent. Nadia had rerouted the current of her will, and Lucca found herself clinging to the rungs as if they could keep her from being swept away in the flood.

"Look," said Nadia, in the voice that channeled a millennium of royal authority, "I said I wasn't going to let you go crazy on me, right? Well, what you just said was crazy other-Lucca talking. I know you're scared—I'm scared, too—but we're going to go east and look for Robo. We are not giving up. Ever." There was a deliberate pause. "And I'm pretty sure you said there was a Gate there before, too. So we'll take that one home." Apparently feeling that the situation called for stronger language than normal, Nadia added, "Dammit."

Several seconds' thought failed to resolve whether the heat in Lucca's face was from shame or anger. At last she took a deep breath, said, "Thanks, I needed that," and broke into laughter.

Nadia tapped at her ankle, and Lucca looked down to see the princess's perplexed expression. "Um—"

"Sorry." Lucca coughed to cover a giggle. "It's just, well, for you, that was _badass_." Then she was laughing again until her sides ached.

For a moment, Nadia looked miffed, but she quickly broke into a grin. "Better watch out. I swear like a sailor when I'm angry."

"I'll bet." Clearing her throat until her snickering subsided into a smile, Lucca turned back to the ladder. "But we're all crazy here, right? I'm the one who's about to lead us into near-certain death."

"Aw, just _near_-certain?" Nadia's voice came from the base of the ladder, and Lucca began to climb again as she added, "Damn hell ass."

"Hey, _you're_ the one getting squashed if I fall down laughing."

There was no death squad waiting on the surface, but Lucca remained wary as she led the way to Lab 32. Considering that there was no food in the area and only two ways out, the robots had probably concluded that it would be most expedient to wait for the intruders either to enter one of the labs or to give any their location by tapping into the power grid. _They're probably all over Arris Dome by now, assuming they're in any kind of hurry to wipe us out._ As helpful as a patiently indifferent response would have been, Lucca felt a cold sickness rise in her throat every time she considered it.

_Okay, not thinking about it._

"See that rock?" she said, halting Nadia. "See if you can shoot it."

Nadia's first shot went wide, but she quickly figured out how to compensate. It wasn't long before more than half of the blasts were finding their target, and the rock was pocked and spotted with black marks.

"Not bad," Lucca said as they resumed walking.

Nadia beamed. "It's not that different from a crossbow, really." She paused to twirl the gun around her finger. "Now I feel like I should have high heels and something in black leather."

A tremor went through Lucca's brain, and she was saved from the visual only when Lab 32 appeared through the dark haze. "Thank you, near-certain death," she muttered, only to be exponentially less grateful when her brain transferred the leather and stiletto heels to Johnny. _If this is insanity, I don't think I'm going to like it._

"So this is where the hair is?" asked Nadia as they came to entrance.

Lucca frowned and pulled her notebook out of her bag. "I feel like we're missing something," she said, then stopped and cursed as she found the page. "Of course. We don't have the key to the jet bike."

"We can't just walk?"

"Before, yeah. But now?" Sighing, Lucca put away the book and trudged inside.

Nadia's voice was obstinately hopeful. "Maybe the hair guy has a spare."

_Actually..._ Mulling over an idea, Lucca peered around a ruined terminal and called, "Hey, Johnny!"

As the clatter of approaching robots filled the air, she spent a panicked moment thinking that she might have called down an extermination squad. But the robots that appeared were a far cry from the sleek, well-armed security droids of Lab 16, and her fears were hushed when the noisy revving of an engine was followed by the squeal of brakes, a choking cloud of exhaust, and the appearance of a modified android.

_Well, whaddya know? He really _is_ a tricycle._

"He's a robot," Nadia whispered as Johnny gave them an intrigued look. "Why the heck does he need hairgel?"

Lucca shrugged. "One of those impossible mysteries of time and space, I guess. Like why people like jerky."

"Hey, hey," Johnny called, in a grating voice that was still familiar, "you're _organics_? Heh! Thought I'd never see bloodbags 'round here again."

Nadia looked offended on behalf of lifeforms everywhere, so Lucca jumped to answer first. "Yeah. You got a problem with that?"

Johnny switched from bipedal to bicycle in a smooth motion, then zoomed toward them, screeching to a halt with only inches to spare. Nadia's startled leap brought a grin to his face. "So, babe," he said, sliding his wheels up his back, "whatcha doing alive? Thought we'd run outta your kind, know what I'm saying?"

"What's it to you?" Leather or no, Nadia could cop a convincing attitude. "We're pretty tough to get rid of."

"Pfft. Pests." Johnny ran a hand through his hair and completely failed to be ironic about it. As his sunglasses flipped up to let his eye sensors scan the girls, he broke into an even broader grin. "Got some luggage there, sweethearts. Planning a little trip?"

_If I ever find out who created his AI, I'll have to rewrite history again._ The joke fell flat even in her head, and Lucca frowned as she said, "We're here to race."

One of the robot lackeys sounded a loud buzzer that made both girls cover their ears.

"On what, those flesh-sticks you call legs?" Johnny's laugh put Lucca in mind of a mentally unstable goat. "Babe, _please_."

Nadia put a hand on her hip. "We heard you've got a jet bike around here. We're here to ride."

A flicker behind Johnny's glasses betrayed his interest. "Hey, got the key?"

"Well, not _exactly_," said Nadia.

This time Lucca was prepared for the buzzer, but Nadia didn't get her hands to her ears quickly enough to avoid wincing, which elicited another round of laughter from Johnny. Lucca caught herself trying to locate his speakers.

"Well," Johnny drawled, slouching against one of his flunkeys, "I guess you chumps are right outta luck. You got guts showing your little pink hides around here, though. I like that. So I'll give you a five-minute headstart before I broadcast this thing over the security network, and maybe you two can keep those guts on the inside." Brushing his hair back, Johnny added, "But hey, come back if you ever find the key. We'll ride the wind, babe."

Nadia tugged on Lucca's sleeve and whispered, "So is he hitting on us or just being creepy?"

Lucca made a face. "How would his hitting on us _not_ be creepy?"

"Good point. So what now?"

Pursing her lips, Lucca glanced over the layout of the room. The four lackey droids wouldn't last long in the face of a good fire spell, but Johnny's reference to keeping the girls off the network gave her pause. How quickly could it transmit data? Would it activate automatically in the case of a threat? Would a suspicious move bring an extermination squad down on their heads?

_Only one way to find out._

"Okay," Lucca whispered, hoping that her voice was too low for the robots' sound sensors to pick up, "when I wave my hand, point the gun at Bikeboy and look menacing."

"I _am_ menacing. They call me 'Nadia Never-misses.'"

"That's the spirit." Taking a deep breath, Lucca strode past the robots to Johnny.

His sunglasses snapped up on their hinge, giving her a view of his half-lit eye bulbs. "Don't know a good thing when you see it, do ya, babe? Hey, if you _want_ to be exterminated..."

She beckoned him to lean forward, and, tilting his head curiously, he obeyed. "Actually," she said, "I want to cut a deal. Ditch the droids so we can talk."

Laughing, Johnny straightened up. "What, when there's an alert out on two 'probable humans' who blazed through Lab 16? You wish, babe." He shrugged and added, "Offer stands, though. Four minutes, three seconds."

"As long as we understand each other, then." As casually as she could, Lucca began to turn back to the exit, only to spin around and whip fireballs off her fingers at the droids.

Lucca couldn't have asked for a better shot. Her targets were clustered around Johnny in a sycophantic semicircle, and none of them were built to withstand high temperatures. Before Johnny could make a move, Nadia cleared her throat demurely and drew his attention to her gun.

"Don't even think about reporting us," Lucca said, hoping that he hadn't already done so. "If I detect any network activity coming from you, Miss Never-misses and I are going to open fire. And I hear styling products are pretty darn flammable." To strengthen the pretense, Lucca tapped her helmet's antenna.

Johnny snarled. "You ungrateful organ-sacks deserve what you get."

The beginnings of guilt flickered over Nadia's face, so Lucca rushed to say, "If war's hell, I wonder what that makes genocide?" She gestured for Nadia to advance, keeping the gun trained on Johnny. "We're crossing the lab. And you're giving us a ride."

"Feh. I can have a unit here in less than a minute."

"And I can melt your circuitry in less than a second. How's your math?"

As Johnny slid into his motorcycle mode, growling, Nadia leaned over to whisper, "This feels, I don't know, _wrong_, doesn't it? I mean, we're the good guys..."

"Which means our ends should count for something, right?" Lucca frowned as soon as the words left her mouth. _It shouldn't matter if it's only going to be erased,_ she told herself, but Nadia's image eclipsed the thought. "Look, he's a jerk, anyway."

Nadia rode in front, holding the gun at the ready in case Johnny tried to throw them, but Lucca could read the reluctance in her shoulders. _I know,_ she wanted to say, _but someone has to make the hard decisions, and maybe you should be grateful it's not you._ Lucca wondered which of her selves had worked out that bit of justification. _Crono would have said something, but Crono never existed._

As they reached the other end of the highway and began to decelerate, Nadia relaxed her gun arm with obvious relief. "Okay," Lucca said, "just let us off—"

Johnny braked with enough force to send both girls flying into the wreckage, then vanished with a squeal and a cloud of exhaust.

"Owww," moaned Nadia from atop a pile of dirt. "You okay?"

"Just bruised, I think." Wincing, Lucca picked herself up from an ash-heap and tried not to look at the jagged metal she had narrowly missed. "In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have stopped threatening him while we were still in motion."

"At least he wasn't going full-speed." Nadia took Lucca's proffered hand and got shakily to her feet. "I'm not bleeding anywhere, am I?"

If she was, it wasn't heavily enough to show through the dirt. "Probably not," Lucca replied. "You up to running? Even if Johnny was exaggerating, I'm betting we don't have long before this place is crawling with robots."

As they dashed out of the lab and into the eternal dust storm, Lucca tried to work out the safest route to Proto Dome. Staying on the main road wouldn't be much more surreptitious than setting off signal flares, and she was already developing a stitch in her side. _We need cover, and we need cover we can walk behind._

Lucca's gaze fell on the boulders and shallow cliffs along the nearby southern coast. Motioning for Nadia to follow, she sprinted for them.

"See?" she panted once they'd scrambled down behind a long shelf of rock. "Cover." One coughing fit later, Lucca added, "Also, dust."

"Ugh. I think I'm getting allergic to the future." Nadia was wheezing a little, too, but not as badly. While Lucca took a few more seconds to recover, Nadia peered down at the bruise-colored ocean and asked, "So do we jump in and swim for it if we get cornered?"

"Given the choice between killer robots and post-apocalyptic water, I'll take the robots, thanks." Lucca's breath was returning, and she paused only to brush some of the grit off her glasses before starting to follow the land east, with Nadia scampering ahead.

Only a year ago, the robots' strongholds had been limited, and any networks they had were restricted to single domes or factories. That Johnny knew about what happened in Lab 16 suggested a network that spanned at least half a continent, if not the entire world. _Which would be much more exciting if it weren't being used to hunt down the remnants of humanity._

Lucca shook the speculation out of her head. What mattered was that such a thing couldn't have come about in twelve months any more than Zeal could have gone airborne overnight.

"It just doesn't make sense," she mused aloud. "Arris Dome's been deserted for more than a year, obviously. Even if Doan—"

Nadia stopped walking and turned. "Who?"

_Ah, so this is why _internal_ monologues are so popular._ "Doan. Your descendant. Also the descendant of the director of Arris Dome's info center."

"Lucca. Sentences."

Sighing, Lucca halted and resigned herself to sharing. "Look, he used to be your descendant, okay? But we met him after you met Crono. If that already set a change in motion, Doan must have been Crono's descendant, too, and you can see how that would get sticky." Lucca shook her head. "But that's not big enough. I mean, he was the leader at Arris Dome, but that doesn't explain why everything else is wrong. Something _happened_, something big enough to—"

Realization crashed over her like a plate of glass, shattering the world into a million shards that all reflected the same image. _Shit. Way to overlook the obvious._

Nadia waved. "Earth to Lucca, what—"

"Sandorino. Again." Lucca bit her lip. "If I'd had any idea how much that town was going to screw up the world, I would've burned it down myself."

"Lucca—"

"Look, I'm not going to feel guilty for saying that." Before Nadia could protest, she went on, "It's not like we just have one Renaldo to worry about—we've got thousands of Renaldos running around with their sleazy mustaches and nasty grins, and nothing after 758 AD is right anymore. So Jack and Jill get together after all—so what? We've still got all those other Renaldos scraping history against a cheese grater."

Nadia raised her hand. "Hold up. How did we get from robots to Renaldo?"

"The hard way." Lucca took a moment to clean her glasses. "Maybe having Sandorino around created another major dome, something the machines could use as part of their infrastructure. Or maybe somebody's descendant made a technological leap that backfired after Lavos came out. Or maybe it's just a million little things." She shook her head. "There's no way to straighten it all out."

For a moment, Nadia was silent, but her gaze was uncomfortably intense. "You really mean it, don't you?" she said at last. "You really do want to go back and let everyone die."

Lucca returned the look. "Would you want to live if—" The sentence almost finished itself before she realized what she was saying, and Lucca grimaced. "Look, that's not what I—"

"I know." Nadia started walking again, her gait stiff. "I just don't think we get to choose for them."

_Oh,_ Lucca wanted to say, _so they get to choose for everyone else, instead?_

But there would have been no point in voicing the thought; she and Nadia could spend the rest of lives arguing against a backdrop of ashes, and it wouldn't change what had happened or had to happen. It wouldn't make the issue anything more than hypothetical, either, unless Red Gates were spun out of words and air.

_If Frog isn't over himself by the time we get back, I'm going to drag him out of that hole by his tongue._

"I'm sorry," said Nadia, slowing her pace to match Lucca's as they curved south with the coast. "We shouldn't be fighting at a time like this."

"Agreed." _Much better to worry about robotic death squads, instead._

A sudden squeak made her jump, and Lucca summoned up two fistfuls of fire as she turned to face the sound. The flames faded as she discerned the wiry, dust-colored body of a rat scurrying under a pile of stones.

"Was that what I think it was?" Nadia asked after a beat.

"Depends. If you think it was the Good Fairy of Springtime, probably not." Lucca stared at the area where the rat had disappeared, feeling an absurdly grateful smile tug at her lips. "But chalk one up for life."

Nadia squinted at the rubble around the base of the cliff. "I wonder how many more there are."

"Billions, I hope." Lucca grinned as she added, "This would sound really weird out of context, but I hope the whole planet's infested."

As she and Nadia continued along the shore, they paused occasionally to point out tiny gaps in the rock and debate whether a pinkish flash had been a tail or a trick of the wind. Lucca preferred that sort of alertness to assuming that every patter was a harbinger of death.

On the other hand, when Proto Dome came into view and the landscape remained droid-free, Lucca felt paranoia creeping back into her thoughts. _They're tracking us in secret. Johnny stuck a homing device on us. The rats are in league with them. The rats are cyborgs._

Lucca pinched the bridge of her nose. "I've hit bionic rats. Help me."

Nadia considered for a moment, then began to sing quietly, "Once was a fiddler in Porre town, they say, they say, they say..."

Whether consciously or not, she had picked a folk song that appeared unchanged in all of Lucca's memories, unlike "The Forest Nymph" or "One Night in Medina." Whether Lucca had consistently liked the song was fuzzier, but at least she felt a comforting sense of familiarity as she took up the next line: "Charming them all with his golden sound, tra-lay, tra-lay, tra-lay."

"Never did anyone dare to ask, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no..."

"What did he hide with his velvet mask? Tra-lo, tra-lo, tra-lo."

By the time they drew near to the back of the dome, the miller's daughter had tricked the fiddler into removing his mask and gloves, revealing that he was nothing but a skeleton. The next twenty or so verses detailed how this had come to be, Lucca recalled, but she'd only ever seen them in print. While there were certainly more annoying nursery rhymes, "The Cursed Fiddler of Porre" was the only one on which every babysitter in Truce had set a non-negotiable ban.

"My nursemaid always hit her limit around here," Nadia said. "You know any more of it?"

Lucca's attention had shifted to picking her way between the western side of the dome and the sea, but it was easy enough to delve into the fairly consistent memory of reading the lyrics for a class. "I don't remember exactly how it goes, but I think the guy was cursed to waste away and wander forever. It was a stupid reason, too, like he wasn't nice enough to his mother or something." She paused to listen for any suspicious noises, then added, "I don't think the curse really bothered him, either. I'm pretty sure he even bragged about it. Then he disappears with the miller's daughter at the end, but I don't remember if she wanted to go."

Nadia wrinkled her nose. "Well, that sucks. No wonder nobody ever finishes it."

There was a soft scattering sound from beyond the curve of the dome, as of pebbles shifting under a clumsy foot. Grabbing Nadia's arm, Lucca pressed herself against the dome and strained her ears. It would be strange for a robot to lose its balance like that, but it was dangerous to assume the best.

As the seconds crept by, the shuffling sound drew nearer. Lucca pushed heat into her palms and glanced at Nadia, who held her gun at the ready. They exchanged a nod.

The footsteps came almost to the curve of the dome. As Lucca prepared to send an explosion toward their creator, a shrill scream rent the silence.

For an instant, the world was replaced by a vision of a bone-white machine, then by flashes of real bone that was actually mostly red.

The nightmare vanished when a little blur ran across the space between the front of the dome and a nearby crater. _Ran,_ Lucca thought with a strange detachment. _Legs. Human._

"Hang on," Nadia whispered, "was that—"

From beyond the bend of the dome came the crunch of metal against metal, then against shards of glass. The tactical portion of Lucca's brain took over. _One. Humanoid. Heavy. Not a security droid._ Trying to stay focused, Lucca crept as rapidly as she dared toward the nearest pile of wreckage that would offer cover. Nadia followed in silence.

They crouched behind a twisted steel formation just as a bright gleam came into the open. Holding her breath, Lucca peered through a gap into her makeshift bulwark. _Hinged foot segments. Thick ankle-plating._ Something cracked inside her as the robot advanced unhurriedly toward the crater: _R-series._

_But I don't know it, Mommy! I wish I hadn't heard... If only I..._

The little piece of amber had always been there to remind her, but not even four hundred years and a lot of pressure could survive what she had done. Butterflies flapped their wings and drowned the whole world in storms. What were memories, anyway, but the most plausible fictions?

_mom walked crono lived in the house with the green door—_

It all burned down to ash, and even the smoke was lost.

No, the smoke was still there.

Lucca snapped out of it to find that Nadia had tackled her to put out the fire she'd managed to set on her shirt. "Don't you dare," the princess was whispering. "Don't you dare freak out on me. I need you here."

A hero would have stood, challenged, and fought, or at least done _something_. Heroes always knew the right thing to do, and everything else fell into place around them. World and time shifted to justify their actions.

"But I break things," she said aloud, almost without realizing it.

Nadia shook her head. "You build things, too." It was a vaporous hope, but at least it was enough to change the taste of the air. That was more than could be said for the hope that the robot's intentions were anything but hostile, or that the serial number would be unfamiliar.

Through the gap in the metal, Lucca watched the dull golden machine come to the edge of the crater. The second scream decided her.

But she didn't get a chance to act before Nadia leapt to her feet and bellowed, "You leave that kid alone!"

_I would have,_ Lucca told herself, ignoring the weakness in her knees as she stood. _I'm not that far gone._ In a voice that very nearly didn't shake, she shouted, "Prometheus!"

There was a pause, during which the only sound was a child's terrified sobbing. Then the upper half of the robot's head swivelled until the glowing eyes locked on her, and even without the dent there was no mistaking him.

The hum of charging weapons came over the wind as Prometheus advanced. "Priority targets acquired."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> Thanks go to **Myshu** for catching my proofing error.

There would be time enough later to second-guess herself. If Lucca survived, she could spend the rest of her life wondering what else she could have done.

"If" was a stupid word, too short and weak to carry the burdens of its implications.

_Focus_. Directing her emotion into her hands, Lucca tried to figure out what level of physical threat Prometheus represented. He seemed to be alone, and he was designed to exterminate the helpless, not the armed and dangerous. As her gaze flickered over the weapons, she tried to recall the weaknesses of the R-series instead of wondering when the robots had found unit R-66Y.

She couldn't. _You woke up, but there was no one to wish you a good morning._

"Uh, Lucca?" Nadia tugged urgently on her sleeve. "That noise's getting louder, and he's getting closer, and I don't know much about robots, but I'm sure that's bad."

Lucca blinked. "Right. He's charging his weapons." She glanced at the wreckage around them before saying, "Split up and keep finding new cover. I'm trying to remember where the weak spots are." As Nadia complied, Lucca crouched back behind the metal, grabbed her thoughts by their shoulders, and shook them.

She could rattle off his fighting capabilities in alphabetical order: _Beams. Close-range explosives. Electrical discharge. Projectiles. Self-reparation._ So why was she drawing blanks on his vulnerabilities?

At least she wouldn't have to worry about any major surprises. Under the Mother Brain, the robots had mobilized themselves and wiped almost all of the life off the planet's surface—but for all the sophistication of their AI, the machines could create nothing. There had been no innovation since the Day of Lavos.

"A nation of steel and pure logic," the Mother Brain had said. But it wasn't a paradise, just an eternally frozen moment after the fire fell. Without life, there was only stasis.

"Lucca! What the heck are you doing over there?"

Nadia's blast ricochetted from Prometheus's armor, creating just enough of a delay for Lucca to dodge a blindingly bright beam. _Focus, dammit,_ she chided herself. _I told him I'd watch his back because_—

"Backs of his knees," Lucca called, darting behind the remains of a door. "Keep moving!"

Nadia rolled behind a boulder seconds before her old cover burst apart. "_Where_?"

The heaps of wreckage were being rapidly reduced to scraps and slivers. Another explosion cut down the number of potential hiding places by a quarter.

"Behind the dome! Move it!" Lucca leapt up and unleashed a tidal wave of magical energy toward Prometheus, which she knew would be enough to delay but not disable him; the R-series were better armored than standard security droids. Panting and light-headed, she scrambled around the curve of the building in Nadia's wake.

As she caught up, Lucca gasped out, "Jog. He's slow."

Nadia slackened her pace enough to let Lucca catch her breath. "So could we just keep running around the dome until he gives up?"

"I'm sure he—" Lucca winced and grabbed at the stitch in her side. "He's put out an alert. Even if the closest back-up is at the factory, we don't have that long."

"But that last alert didn't really pan out, did it?"

Just ahead was a large mound of dirt and metal pressed up against the base of the dome, which gave Lucca the seed of an idea. Changing course for the artificial hill, she said, "Why do you think Prometheus was waiting outside for us? I'll bet the droids are stationed all along the main road, and there's probably another R-series robot or two at the factory. We're dead if they all show up."

Nadia didn't answer, and Lucca felt a twinge of guilt for making things sound so bleak. "Look," she added, "I've got a plan now, okay? See if you can climb that thing."

After a casting a dubious look at her sandals, Nadia stashed the gun in her belt and began to scramble up the junk pile. "How high?" she asked from around the half-way point.

"High enough to find something you can hide behind and peer around."

A few more seconds' cautious ascent found Nadia on a steel outcropping, where clumps of dirt and what appeared to be appliances shielded her from Lucca's view. Keeping a wary ear out for Prometheus, Lucca said, "I'm going to draw his fire, and I want you to fire at the backs of his legs. You're not going to get off more than a shot or two before he figures it out, so for God's sake _aim_."

"Right." Nadia's tone indicated that she had noticed the lack of ground cover. "Are you sure you—"

"Hey, I'm Fire Goddess Lucca, remember?" Lucca hoped her bravado wasn't too transparent. "I'll be fine. You just worry about being a good sniper, soldier."

Prometheus's footsteps grew uncomfortably loud, so Lucca waved to Nadia before darting away from the mound. Each stomp seemed more protracted than the last, until Lucca began to wonder if time would crawl to a halt and this moment would still be playing when Gaspar tipped his hat in front of the lamppost. _No, not this moment. Not here. Anywhere but here._

She and Crono used to play "Anywhere but Here" in their literature class. Remembering took the edge off her fear. Letting out a long-held breath, Lucca found that time was flowing forward as always, and Prometheus was rounding the dome.

She was too drained to manage another attack like the one that had left scorch marks on his chest, but he had no way of knowing it. "Back for more?" she called, rolling a gumball-sized fireball over her palm. "Don't play with fire unless you want to get burned."

_And that really just came out of my mouth._ Without waiting to see what other clichés her wit would resort to under pressure, Lucca threw the tiny flame at Prometheus and dashed out of the way of his retaliatory blast.

Finding the energy to cast spells quickly became irrelevant. She had nothing to shield her, and it was all Lucca could do to avoid the volley of beams and missiles. When she stumbled once, a laser burned away the end of her scarf.

Each strike brought Prometheus nearer, as well. Evasion came down to milliseconds and hair's-breadths, but Lucca couldn't draw him out much farther without making it too difficult for Nadia to aim. The only thing keeping her alive was the ingrained knowledge of how to predict his attacks. _Right hand, clockwise, missle. Armor shift, electrical discharge. Left arm_—

Lucca darted to the right and realized too late that Prometheus had been expecting it. In desperation she sprang away with almost enough force to wrench her ankle, and her back tensed as the searing heat of the beam came within an inch of her skin. It occurred to her that her body was too contorted to land properly an instant before her foot struck the ground, buckled under her weight, and sent her sprawling.

There was no chance of her getting up fast enough. She gritted her teeth and tried regardless, if only because she could still remember watching Crono rise, battered and bleeding, to stagger forward, while she had lain helpless and watched the already-thin line blur between inspiration and idiocy.

A shot rang out.

Instinctively Lucca rolled aside, just in time to avoid being crushed as Prometheus toppled forward like a felled tree, the flexible material around his left knee torn and smoking. She had a screwdriver out of her bag and into the back of his head before he could move.

Then she sat with the tool dangling from her fingers, staring at the place where the dent should have been.

"Nice shot, Nadia!" said the princess's voice. "You saved my life, Nadia! Way to go, Nadia!" There was a pause. "Um, are you okay?"

It occurred to Lucca that she hadn't moved in a while. "I don't think I'm injured," she replied at last. "When did you climb down here?"

"While you were zoning out. Is he..." Nadia trailed off as her hand appeared in Lucca's line of sight and began waving. "Hey, snap out of it! Weren't you worried about other robots showing up?"

Lucca looked up at her and blinked. "Sorry. It's just, well, maybe I can—"

"Say no more. You be Ms. Fix-it, and I'll be lookout." Nadia gave her an encouraging smile before adding, "Just fix it fast, okay?"

"And look sharp." Lucca's hands trembled as she took off her outer shirt and draped it over her work area to block the worst of the duststorm. Ideally she would have been doing this indoors, but ideally she wouldn't have needed to do it at all.

Steadying herself, Lucca opened the top of Prometheus's head. While his circuits were still mapped out in her mind, the cartography was shaky. The only way to recall some of the trickier areas was to hover her fingers over them and wait for kinesthetic memory to kick in.

So it took her a moment to realize that the strange component plugged into his motherboard was new and not just forgotten.

It had to be a networking device, she decided, following the wires to a little nub of an antenna mounted on the side of Prometheus's head. Something else seemed off about the layout, and after a few seconds she realized that certain other components were missing. Prometheus had no means of storing data locally.

The conclusion was there, as obvious as a crow in a snowfield, but for once Lucca craved the ambiguity of gray.

Breathing hard, she disconnected the network device and flipped the power switch. The processor whirred and the lights came on, but there was no longer any AI to determine Prometheus's actions. His eyes shone vacantly into the dust.

The earth cracked as Lucca stabbed the screwdriver into it.

"I think I see something," Nadia called down from her perch atop the junk heap. "It's really far off, though, and it's hard to tell with all this dust." It sounded as if she was climbing down again, but Lucca was more concerned with hating the planet for being injudicious with its favors.

There was a silence as Nadia's feet shuffled into her peripheral vision. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"He's dependent on the network." Lucca's eyes stung, but she ignored them as she said, "If I take away the connection, he can't function. But if I leave it in place, he'll be taking orders from the Mother Brain again as soon as he powers on. It looks like the system exists to prevent exactly what I'm trying to do."

Nadia knelt beside her. "But you're a genius. You can fix it."

"There's nothing I can do. The one time it matters I—" Lucca's voice hitched, and her rage at herself exploded out on the next word: "Goddammit!"

"But we can't—"

"Right. We can't." Lucca's head throbbed as she calmed into bitterness. "All we can do is leave him here, and then they can find him and patch him up and send him killing again. Ain't life grand?"

"But we can't just leave him!" Nadia's voice had a strange tenor to it, and Lucca looked up to meet an expression that would have been earnest if it hadn't been so confused. "He'd kill people," Nadia continued, but her voice wavered. "I don't think he'd want that."

_Don't you dare._ Lucca clenched her fists until the joints ached. "So how the hell is this different from Sandorino? Because he's just a machine?" The last word was almost a snarl, and she tried to get control of herself as she said, "Or is it because there's only one of him? Is there some magic number that it's okay to sacrifice?"

"No!" There were tears in Nadia's eyes. "That's not what I meant at all! I—I just—I hate this! It's not fair!"

Maybe she hadn't meant it, at least not consciously. But even if Lucca had inferred correctly, Nadia wouldn't be the only one tainted by hypocrisy. Had Lucca ever really believed that she fought for the sake of the future? No one wanted to save the world just for the sake of saving it; everyone wanted vengeance or absolution or a sense of purpose or just the ability to sleep at night.

_So why did you, Crono? For friendship?_ No one fought for humanity, either, but for a handful of human beings who meant something. _Or maybe I'm just cynical._

But none of that changed that there was an extermination squad approaching, a child crying in a crater, and the kind of choice that she resented having to make.

"You're right, though," Lucca said at last, the words leaden on her tongue. "He's only a shell. They already killed him when they took his memories away." She shook her head. "It's not the same at all."

Nadia was still crying. "No, there has to be a way to—"

"He's _already dead_." Hoping her resolve would hold, Lucca got to her feet. "Don't make it worse."

Nadia's lips trembled as she breathed, as if they were trying to wrap themselves around the right words. In the end she managed, "But it's not fair."

"I know." Lucca retrieved her shirt, then took the gun and pressed it into Nadia's hand. "Here."

"What?" Nadia would have dropped the weapon if Lucca hadn't been holding it in place. "Why are you—"

"Fire straight down inside his head. It'll destroy the circuitry. Irreparably."

"Lucca—"

"Just shoot him, okay? Don't make me do it."

Biting her lip until she tasted blood, Lucca turned around and closed her eyes. How much time passed was impossible for her to say, thick as it was with the need to scream and the cruel, wild hope for a miracle. The only sound was the dark cry of the wind, drowning out the noise of her own breaths.

Then she heard the blast, which seemed to have come from inside her own head, and it might as well have; everything horrible lately seemed to be a product of her misguided brain, and all she could think was that it was her fault, and was it worse if this world mattered or if it didn't?

Nadia's arms were around her, and there were hot tears soaking her shoulder. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

A tiny gasp reached Lucca's ears. Ripping herself out of Nadia's arms, she whirled to find the source of the noise, already drawing what little fire she could into her hands. "Come on," she growled. "Try me."

Through the blur of her tears, it took Lucca a moment to recognize the small figure almost blending into the dust. The magic died in her palms as the child stared wide-eyed at her.

"It's okay," Nadia said, but her voice was unsteady. "We can help you, see?"

Glancing wildly from one girl to the other, the child dashed to the cliffs along the shore, where it scampered into a hole so well concealed that Lucca never would have noticed it on her own.

_They're in hiding._ Still half-dazed, Lucca made her way to the gap and reached a hand into it. Not even she would be able to fit through easily; a larger person wouldn't have considered trying. "They're alive," she said, trailing her fingers along the edge. "They found somewhere safe."

Nadia's hand appeared beside her own, resting against the rocks. "They're living underground?"

"They probably followed the rats." Even in the midst of Lucca's misery, the click of pieces falling together was comforting. "I don't know how they're surviving down there, but they—"

"Matter?" Nadia gave her a hesitant half-smile.

Lucca turned away, then put both hands on the nearest boulder and strained to roll it over the entrance. Sensing an impending protest, she stopped to explain, "It's so the droids won't find them when they come looking for us. It's not safe for the people to use this exit for now, anyway."

"Thank goodness. I was afraid you were crazy again." With just enough of a smile to lighten the comment, Nadia helped her push the rock the rest of the way over the entrance. There was nothing left to suggest that humanity was only a tunnel away, and even the girls' footprints would be gone by the time the squadron arrived.

"We should go now," said Nadia. "I need to see the sun again."

 

Proto Dome was deserted, but unlike the last time Lucca had seen it, the lights were on. She let out a sigh of relief. With everything else that had been running roughshod over her, Lucca had forgotten to worry that the power might not be activated.

"And birds," Nadia was saying, continuing her list of things she had missed. "Especially the little yellow ones that sort of coo."

Lucca caught sight of the Enertron, and her body veered toward it. "I can't believe you haven't gotten to ice cream yet."

"I'm saving that for last. I have whole subcategories for toppings." Nadia's voice was a little too strained to be cheerful, but she made a commendable effort. "I was going to do a poem, too, but I couldn't get past, 'I love ice cream, it makes me scream.'"

"'My spoon doth gleam'?" suggested Lucca, pressing the release button for the Enertron. She let herself fall back into it with a sigh.

"I know this thing has a name," said Nadia as she examined the device, "but all I can remember is 'Magic Sleeping Machine.'"

"And right now, I almost like that one better." Resolving to apologize to science later when she was less angry with it, Lucca frowned and leaned forward to peer at the controls. "Why isn't it closing automatically?"

"Maybe it's stuck. Here, let me help." Without waiting for a response, Nadia let her fingers dance up and down the Enertron's buttons.

Lucca caught her wrist. "Geez, Nadia, don't just hit stuff at random. I don't want to find out whether this thing has a purée function." When the only answer was an oddly pensive look, she cleared her throat and added, "Er, I was just kidding. Maybe I shouldn't try to make jokes right now." The silence persisted. "Okay, I give. What'd I do?"

"It's nothing like that," Nadia said quickly. "It's just... That's the first time you've called me by my name."

"Is it?" Lucca shifted uncomfortably. "I didn't realize. I mean, I wasn't trying not to or anything."

Nadia shrugged. "It's okay, just something I noticed. I can be pretty acute, you know."

"Astute."

"That too."

"Although," Lucca added, "I'll bet your interior angles are all less than ninety degrees."

"Would that be funny if I'd paid attention to the math tutor?"

"Not really, no." But it was enough to keep Lucca together as she stepped out of the Enertron.

_Well, there's the problem._ None of the machine's lights were on, and a vague memory asserted itself, reminding her that the Enertron had once worked when the rest of the dome hadn't.

Lucca tapped one of the darkened bulbs. "Guess it's on a separate generator. There'd be no reason for the robots to replace the power supply if it failed, either." She turned and headed for the door in the back.

As Nadia watched, Lucca pressed the conveniently labeled button to open the path to the Gate. The action triggered another memory, one of waiting, more lonely and paranoid than she'd ever been willing to admit, as her friends ventured north to the factory. The combination of boredom and anxiety had frayed her nerves, and her brain's decision to replay the Day of Lavos on loop hadn't helped. The initial euphoria of having a plan and purpose had been passing, leaving her to wonder if they had all left their sanity somewhere back in Guardia Forest.

Robo had come back to her broken, but she'd been able to fix him then.

Nadia's voice was a welcome interruption. "So where does this Gate lead? I mean, anything's better than this, but I'm not really up for a surprise."

"Let me check." Lucca dug out her notebook and flipped to the page where she'd sketched the layout of the End of Time, complete with annotated Gates. "It connects to Medina," she said, following the line with her finger. There was a flash of recollection as the order of events came clear. "It's the closet Gate."

Raising her eyebrows, Nadia asked, "Do I even want to know?"

"Sure you do. This Gate goes back to our era." Lucca traced her pen idly over the page, decorating the margins with cubes. "It should land us in the friendliest little house in Medina, too. And the rest of the Mystics should be..." She paused, trying to dig through the layers of sullen loneliness that covered her social studies classes when Crono wasn't there to stick pencils in his ears. Her brow wrinkled as the memory clicked. "On good terms with us?"

Nadia shrugged. "Well, sort of. We get ambassadors every now and then. It's a little awkward, I guess, but it's not like there are guards everywhere."

Frowning, Lucca turned to a blank page and drew a round face with pointed ears, then added a grumpy-looking stick figure and an arrow pointing from the former to the latter. It was followed by another arrow, this one with an "X" in the middle of it, that led to a much cheerier figure.

"That's Ozzie," Lucca said, labeling the round face accordingly. "He's usually green."

Nadia nodded. "And the stick people?"

"Deep and compelling symbols for human-Mystic relations." Lucca added a pointy ear to the right side of each figure's head. "See? Now it's art."

"Well, we've given royal grants to worse."

Their banter still felt a bit stiff, but between it and the visual aid, Lucca managed a smile. "I'll keep that in mind when I need to finance my research. Anyway, back in the original timeline, the Ozzie family kept things hostile for centuries after the war ended."

Nadia tapped the happy stick figure. "So this is where you guys took him out and made everyone play nice?"

"Bingo." Lucca drew another face, this one labeled "IV or so," and put it on the receiving end of two arrows from Ozzie. As she added a stick figure with a wobbly half-smile, she said, "So I guess taking out his descendant made everyone play nice in a resentful kind of way. The only weird part is that the Ozzie I killed came from the timeline where we beat the original—" she tapped the double arrows— "and now we're back in crazy paradox land."

"That's the _only_ weird part?" Nadia made her way into the room with the portal, and Lucca followed after swapping her notebook for the Gate Key.

While Lucca supposed that the Ozzie who attacked Sandorino might have struck regardless of his family's status, she wasn't sure that the two timelines blended neatly. Maybe that paradox was being absorbed by the Robo in the desert, as well. _No, don't think about that._

"Hey," she said as she keyed in the unlocking code, "who's the mayor of Medina now?"

"Um, some Mystic guy?" Nadia looked sheepish. "Staring out the window is kinda more interesting than international relations."

Lucca gestured at the bright blue hole in the air. "Well, we'll find out soon enough."

 

The Gate flung them against the closet doors, and the girls tumbled out of the mothball-scented darkness in an avalanche of child-sized coats and umbrellas.

"Hey!" said a sharp, inhuman voice, and Lucca plucked a yellow poncho off her face as it continued, "Did you people just come out of the closet? Get outta here!"

The speaker was a familiar blue imp, who was glowering down at her from his seat at the kitchen table. Imps could look surprisingly menacing when viewed from below.

Nadia winced. "We really didn't mean—"

"Who do you think you are?" interrupted the brown imp sitting opposite him. "Coming and going out of our closet at all hours. Scram!"

Lucca's memory seemed clear on the fact that these imps had been initially gruff and later friendly, so she decided to try the apologetic route. "Um, sorry about that. We didn't mean to make a mess in your kitchen." To show willing, she picked up a hanger and draped one of the coats over it.

The imps' scowls faded. "Where did you come from?" asked the blue one.

"Long story," replied Nadia. "Is that cake?"

The two imps regarded them for a moment, then exchanged a look. "Pull up a chair," said the brown one. "We'll worry about the mess later. You two look terrible."

That they did, if Lucca could extrapolate her own appearance from Nadia's. The princess's hair was matted and tangled, her clothing torn and filthy, and her eyes underscored by dark circles. Both girls probably stank as well, but Lucca's nose was accustomed to it and she didn't intend to press the matter.

"It's been a rough few days," Lucca said, seating herself. "Um, what's the date here?"

"June twenty-seventh, 1001 AD." The blue imp slid a plate of sandwiches between her and Nadia and added, "I'm Dettle, by the way. My better half over there is Greggan."

Nadia said something that might have been "Nice to meet you" around a mouthful of tuna salad.

_And with royal table manners like those, we don't even have to bother with a fake name._ "I'm Lucca. She's Nadia. We're from Truce, originally." Introductions accomplished, Lucca bit into a ham sandwich and realized how hungry she had been.

As the girls tore through the food, Dettle said, "You're not the first people to show up that way."

Lucca froze in mid-bite. "You just mean Melchior, right?"

Greggan shook his head. "I'm afraid our reaction to you was a result of our last unexpected guest." He paused to pass Nadia a napkin. "Are you friends of Melchior's, then?"

"Wait a minute, Melchior?" Nadia set down the sandwich she'd been ravaging. "Who's that?"

Dettle frowned. "Why does only one of you know him?"

"And that would be the long story." Lucca started to clean her glasses with her scarf before realizing that the burned area was making things difficult. "The short version is that I've traveled more than she has, and we're both on our way back from a bad trip."

"I'd say so," remarked Dettle. "Would you care for some coffee with your cake?"

"Oh, God, yes."

As Dettle hopped off his chair and headed over to the counter, Greggan said, "If you're trying to get back to Truce, you'll have to take the underwater passage. It's not particularly difficult, but I imagine you're tired. You're welcome to stay in our guest room tonight."

"Really?" Nadia broke into a grin when he nodded. "Wow, thanks! I can't believe how nice you guys are being!"

Greggan shrugged. "Think nothing of it. We figure if fate put a time portal in our closet, we're supposed to be helping those who come through it. And besides," he added, as Dettle handed him a mug, "we believe that how you treat others comes back to you."

Dettle winked at him as he resumed his seat. "It seems to be working for us so far."

As much as Lucca hated to burst the love bubble, the earlier comment about the "unexpected guest" nagged at her. "We really do appreciate it," she said, then added as casually as she could, "So this last person who came through—"

"Was a very unpleasant one-eyed human." Dettle frowned. "He ranted about Golems, stole our good cleaver, and ran into the square, demanding that he be crowned king."

"We've had no kings since Magus," said Greggan. "It's very important to us culturally."

"So what happened—" Nadia cut off when she caught the imps' expressions. "Oh."

Lucca shrugged and took a sip of coffee. "Well, can't say it wasn't appropriate."

With an exaggerated shudder, Nadia pushed the now-empty sandwich platter out of her way. "Still, ick." She accepted a slice of cake from Greggan before asking, "So has anyone else come through?"

The atmosphere in the room was suddenly heavier, as if her words had dragged the house far below sea level. After a silence that made Lucca squirm, Greggan said, "One other. That was also unpleasant."

"But in a very different way," said Dettle. "We'd rather not discuss it."

There was another pause, until Nadia gave them all a desperate grin and held up her napkin. "Look! I made a swan!"

"And speaking of swans," said Lucca, deciding that the time had come for non sequiturs, "is this cake homemade?"

 

By the time the subsequently superficial yet pleasant conversation had begun to wind down, the light coming through the western windows carried an orange tint. "Thanks so much again," said Lucca, stifling a yawn as she got to her feet. "We owe you guys one."

"Nonsense," Dettle replied. "You've been good company. And the bathroom's over there, but you might not fit in the tub."

Lucca didn't fit, but the modern miracle of running water was worth the discomfort. The imp-sized towels didn't fit her, either, and she ended up wrapping herself in a spare bedsheet while her clothing began its exciting journey through the laundry cycle.

When she returned to the guest room, Nadia was perched at the windowsill, still unwashed and gazing at the sunset.

"Bathroom's free," said Lucca, flopping down on the bed. "Bring a sheet and toss your clothes in the washer with mine." There was no answer. Curious, Lucca got up and padded over to the window, where she peered over Nadia's shoulder. "Am I missing something?"

"It's just so beautiful," said Nadia. The light gleamed red from her pendant, as if the Dreamstone were remembering its original color. "I never knew how beautiful it was before."

"Yeah, that's how I feel about indoor plumbing."

But Lucca stood beside her until twilight, watching the last of the crimson glow sink beneath the curve of the horizon. Of course, the sun never actually set; it was only hidden by the turning of the planet, and there was an almost tragic humor in ancient humanity's fear that the sun would one day fail to rise. So many things came down to perspective.

Nadia stood and slipped wordlessly from the room. When she heard the door click shut, Lucca took off her glasses, rested her forehead against the glass, and finally let herself cry.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go out to **Xyn** for catching my typos. Spellcheck and I will be having a long talk.

"You've done so much for us already," Nadia said for what Lucca believed was the third time. "You really didn't have to feed us breakfast, too." Her protest might have been more effective if she hadn't been buttering her third muffin.

Dettle shook his head. "It's our pleasure. Sometimes I think we get more visitors through the closet than through the front door."

Lucca doubted that, considering that she and Nadia made for a grand total of five, but there was no sense hashing out the hyperbole when the wonderful world of bacon was beckoning. Now that she was clean, fed, and properly rested for the first time in days, Lucca could almost forget everything that had led her to this point. She had never traveled through time (which was impossible, of course), and all she was doing now was taking a much-needed break from her work to enjoy breakfast with three friends who just happened to be a runaway princess and two imps, and the burn on her scarf was from an accident with an oxyacetylene torch.

Then she caught herself trying to remember how Crono had liked his eggs, and her earlier musings turned her stomach.

Last night hadn't been any better. Although she had composed herself before Nadia came back, Lucca had later jolted awake from a series of nightmares and found herself so tangled in the sheets that she'd needed help getting loose. Nadia, naturally, had wanted to talk about it. All Lucca had wanted to do was lie awake until the phantoms faded from her brain, and even that hadn't worked; she was still plagued by images of a Robo who had a human skeleton and sprayed her with blood when she opened up his head.

Lucca didn't want the bacon after all.

"More coffee?" asked Greggan.

As she nodded, making something that she hoped qualified as an appreciative noise, Lucca let her gaze drift from the imps to the now-tidy closet. The math was obvious, and Greggan and Dettle already knew something about the mechanics of time travel, but somehow it seemed wrong to involve them. Whether this stemmed from a genuine desire not to destroy their happiness was something Lucca didn't want to consider too carefully.

The concern elbowed its way to the front of her brain regardless, and Lucca almost laughed as she realized, _I'm afraid of Gaspar._

"Don't mind her," Nadia said, her kick starting Lucca out of her thoughts. "She's just tired. Things've been pretty rough lately."

"Hey, I'm waking up." Lucca guzzled a mouthful of coffee, nearly scalding her tongue in the process. "Ouch. Right. I just need to caffeinate myself a little more."

There were questions she should have been asking, specifically regarding the Ozzie line, but it was difficult to collect her thoughts with the specter of Gaspar looming over her. _We took your life's work, and Belthasar's and Melchior's, and now I've shot it all to pieces._ Did Gaspar have his Time Egg back now that it had never triggered anything, or did it exist in the same meta-timeline that Lucca wobbled along?

Questioning Dettle and Greggan suddenly seemed more much appealing.

"So," Lucca began, swirling her coffee to cool it, "does the name 'Ozzie' ring any bells for you guys?"

"Of course," said Dettle. "That's basic history."

"I meant Ozzie VIII." The imps looked blank, but Lucca persisted, "Big and purple? Probably scrubbing counters at the mayor's house?"

Greggan shook his head. "The Ozzie line ended more than two centuries ago. It's a famous cautionary tale in these parts."

_Oops. Guess he hadn't spawned yet._ Frowning, Lucca took a sip of her coffee and asked, "Does it bother you that I didn't know that?"

Greggan shrugged. "We've lived here quietly for almost three decades. We've had all the excitement we'd ever want, and we're quite content to keep our noses in our own business."

Dettle leaned over and stage-whispered, "Actually, we're terribly nosy. But we figured out yesterday that whatever you're up to is a lot more complicated than we want to know."

"Well, maybe _you're_ nosy," said Greggan.

There was no longer any question of dragging the two of them to the End of Time, and Lucca was appalled by how much relief she felt. Why did the mere thought of going before Gaspar now make her blood pressure rise? While the disappointment on the Guru's face would sting, it couldn't possibly be worse than Lucca's disappointment in herself. Since when did she entertain such irrational fears?

Of course, there was always the possibility that Gaspar would have no idea what was happening in the timestream, or that he would be helpless to repair it. Maybe what Lucca couldn't handle facing was the potential death of hope. _Or maybe I'm just too arrogant to admit that I'm failing._

Lucca had accidentally broken a vase in a shop in Porre when she was five (in all her realities, she was fairly certain), whereupon the owner had pointed to a sign that read, "You break it, you buy it." When she had protested that no one would ever want a broken vase, her father had replied, "Sweetie, that's the _point_."

Any connection the memory had to her present situation was tenuous at best. It was, however, the only lesson Lucca had ever received in personal responsibility that wasn't preceded by an explosion and followed by half a dozen caveats. Moral education in the Ashtear household was a tricky prospect in any timeline.

A pinch registered on her thigh as Nadia said, "It's a genius thing. Sometimes her eyes completely glaze over. Like jelly donuts."

"And on that appetizing note, we should probably get going." Lucca gulped the rest of her coffee, then said, "Thanks again, guys. I hope—" _I don't ruin your lives, history doesn't iron out you of existence, killer robots don't pop out of your closet_— "to see you again someday." _Behold my tact._

After a final exchange of pleasantries, along with a warning regarding the closet and power surges, Lucca and Nadia were on their way west with a plastic baggie full of muffins as a parting gift.

They had just made it out of sight of Greggan and Dettle's house when Nadia said, "Okay, spill. Who's Melchior?"

"The guy who made the Masamune and your pendant. I'm pretty sure I told you that." Lucca paused as an idea sank in. "He's the Guru of Life, too, and an expert on Dreamstone."

Nadia nodded. "Sounds like we should pay him a visit."

"Way ahead of you. And he lives along the route home."

As they crested the hill overlooking Melchior's house, Nadia said, "Ooh, I just thought of something! Did you really have to kill that Ozzie?"

The troops had already scattered, and Sandorino had already gone on alert. Even if the cowardice gene had skipped that particular Ozzie generation, an impressive show of fireworks probably would have been enough to make him retreat. But Lucca hadn't been looking for non-violent alternatives.

"I may," she said slowly, "have been a little bit trigger-happy." _If we can use the term to cover strutting around like the biggest badass ever to master Flare._

"Well, what if that's _it_?" Nadia bounced from foot to foot. "All we'd have to do is stop you from killing Ozzie! Then no one has to die at all and—"

Lucca waved a hand to cut her off. "Even if we manage to jury-rig a Red Gate, there's no way we're going to get more than one shot at fixing things. I don't know if I could risk everything on those odds." Hoping to forestall the inevitable argument, she added, "But it's not like we have a Gate now, so let's burn that bridge when we come to it."

"Don't you mean 'cross'?"

Instead of answering, Lucca took out her notebook, opened it to a page near the beginning of her narrative, and passed it to Nadia. "Here. Read this part and tell me what's missing."

Pursing her lips, Nadia skimmed the text. When she looked up, she said, "I'm not sure what you mean. There's not a big gap or anything."

"Then what color was Leene's hairpin?"

"Coral." At Lucca's annoyed look, Nadia shrugged and said, "Well, it's kind of an heirloom. I've worn it to some really boring ceremonies."

"Look, that's not the point. The point is that I didn't write it down, and now I can't remember." Before Nadia could point out that she knew now, Lucca went on, "Do you ever listen to those mystery series on the radio? The ones where the big clue that makes everything clear is just some little detail that most people don't notice?"

Nadia nodded. "I always guess the butler. It's right about half the time."

Despite herself, Lucca was intrigued. "What about the shows that don't have a butler?"

"Then I guess secret butler assassins."

"Your brain is a strange and terrifying place." Lucca paused to shake her head and get back on track. "Anyway, I feel like I'm in one of those shows. I'm afraid that I'm forgetting to record the important things because I won't even _know_ what's important until the detective has everyone in the drawing room and starts pointing fingers."

Nadia frowned, then yelled, "Butler attack!" and pounced on Lucca. Both girls went tumbling down the hill in a noisy, grass-stained tangle before rolling to a stop at the base.

Once she'd gotten her breath back, Lucca straightened her glasses and said, "Sometimes I wish you weren't so aggressive about trying to cheer me up."

Nadia grinned, apparently unaware of the twig collection she'd begun in her hair. "Oh, come on. You can't say that wasn't fun." As she helped Lucca to her feet, she added, "And I can help you remember. I'm good with stories."

"Maybe later, then." A convenient change of subject was at hand, and Lucca wasn't about to waste it. "That's Melchior's house over there, so you might want to get his backyard out of your ponytail."

As Nadia made herself a little more presentable, Lucca tried to work out whether this Melchior would have any reason to consider her a menace to society. Most of her time at this reality's Millennial Fair seemed to have been spent glowering at the people who refused to come near the Telepod, so the odds looked promising. And without Crono, she had never been inspired to build a robot battle trainer. _So nothing running amuck. Good._

Hoping that a better opening line than "Hello, former Guru of Life, how are you with Belthasar's handwriting?" would come to her, Lucca rapped on the front door.

"Come in!" called a reassuringly familiar voice. Lucca led the way inside, where Melchior beamed at her over the sword he was polishing. "Ah, customers! Could I interest you young ladies in a weapon or two?"

Before Lucca could reply, Nadia blurted, "Hey, that's the creepy old man who tried to buy my pendant!"

 

_Gee, and here I thought I'd be the awkward one._

 

Melchior peered at them over his glasses. "You both look rather familiar," he said, laying the sword on his table. "And that pendant is more familiar still."

Lucca nodded as she dug through her knapsack. "It should be. I didn't try to blow you up at the Fair, did I?"

"'Cause it wouldn't really have been her," Nadia added helpfully. "It would have been crazy other-Lucca. Do you have one of those big blue things?"

"Nah, I don't remember him having a Nu. He's more of a Dreamstone guy."

When Lucca looked up, notes in hand, Melchior was giving her a look that her memory connected to the time when she, Crono, and Marle had dropped both halves of the Masamune and a chunk of Dreamstone on his kitchen table. Questions were probably not forthcoming.

"So can we leave it at 'long story'?" Lucca asked.

Melchior nodded and sighed. "It's a strange world we live in, and I'm an old man. I'm afraid my curiosity isn't what it used to be."

"Gotcha. We need your help, though." Holding out the sheet that posed the question of who controlled time, Lucca said, "I need to know if you can make heads or tails of this. I promise it's important."

Melchior accepted the page and drew in a sharp breath. _That was quick,_ Lucca thought, and she wondered if it was the handwriting or the content that pointed unambiguously to Belthasar. All things considered, handing Melchior the insane ramblings of his former friend and colleague probably hadn't been the best way to remind him of the life he had lost.

"I'm sorry," Lucca said, and she found that she meant it.

There was a long silence, during which Nadia cast worried looks from Lucca to Melchior. At last he said, "Just answer me this: Is he still somewhere in this world?"

When Lucca shook her head, Melchior sighed. The creases around his eyes seemed to deepen. "Then I suppose it doesn't matter. Let me see..." Once he had smoothed the paper against the table, Melchior squinted at it and began to trace his forefinger over the text.

Lucca tapped Nadia on the shoulder and angled her head at the stairway. Neither of them spoke until they were safely in the basement and unlikely to break Melchior's concentration.

"He must be so lonely," Nadia said, leaning back against the bookshelf.

Lucca shrugged. "He's thirteen thousand years away from home. I don't think 'lonely' really covers it."

"I don't just mean that he's in the wrong time. He lives so far away from everyone, and all he's got is—" she reached over her shoulder and selected a text at random— "_Babbitt's Illustrated Index of Alloys._ That's just depressing."

"He likes making weapons," Lucca pointed out. "That's probably what keeps him going."

Returning the book to its resting place, Nadia said, "Well, that's depressing, too. You said he was some kind of Guru of Life, right? Why would someone like that make weapons?"

"Well, the Guru of Reason went mad, and the Guru of Time lives outside of it." Lucca slouched against the worktable, which triggered a fuzzy memory of processing the Dreamstone. "If it makes you feel any better, one of Melchior's weapons was kind of alive."

"No, that just makes it creepier." Nadia's expression softened as she ran her thumb over her pendant. "But he made this too, huh?"

It was fortunate that Nadia was feeling more contemplative than chatty. Her posture rang too familiar, and Lucca was busy struggling to keep it from overwriting an image of Marle. The context of the memory was still clear enough (walking together from the Millennial Fair to Crono's house to fetch the clone, grateful that Ayla was around to keep the mood from bottoming out), but things fell apart when the group stopped in front of the green door and Marle's hand cupped the pendant that Crono had been keeping for her.

Marle was fast becoming a blur and a shadow in Lucca's mind, a doppelgänger of Nadia. Only a few patches stood out around the edges, little things like the songs Marle made out of access codes, the elaborate bows she tied with Crono's bandana, and the way her ponytail stuck straight up when she cast a spell. It wouldn't take long for Nadia to absorb even the most specific anecdotes into herself, and Lucca's histories would fold together like hot steel under a hammer.

"And then we all put colanders on our heads and had a tea party with the molemen," said Nadia. When Lucca blinked, she added, "Honestly, I think I need a shock collar for you."

Shaking her head, Lucca stepped away from the table. "Sorry. Things just keep setting me off, I guess." Before she could ask what Nadia had been talking about prior to the colanders, Melchior's voice summoned them upstairs.

_Either I seriously zoned out, or he's seriously good with Belthasar's handwriting._ Or, if her luck held, Melchior had been unable to make any sense of the document. Trying to keep her pessimism out of her expression, Lucca emerged from the stairwell.

Melchior's expression suggested that he was trying to keep his memories at bay until he could be alone with them. "I've done what I could," he said, sliding a page of tidy handwriting across the table. "The lines in archaic script were simple enough to translate, but some of the abbreviations are outside my comprehension. And I believe that the lower right-hand corner is taken up primarily by pictographs."

Lucca had a sudden vision of herself in an unfinished basement, chalking up the walls and floor in a private language of gibberish. _No way. Not me._ Forcing the image away, she said, "Thanks. This means a lot to us."

"An old man needs to feel useful. Perhaps I should be thanking you." Melchior smiled, but his voice grew wistful. "He was always such a brilliant engineer. Gaspar used to say that he knew the mind of the universe, but not the heart. Of course, Gaspar always preferred the cryptic."

Nadia glanced up from studying the translation. "Are you saying this _isn't_ cryptic?"

Frowing, Lucca peered over her shoulder and glimpsed several mentions of "slipstreams" and "boundary layers," as well as repeat performances by "shells."

Melchior caught her expression. "Translation is one matter," he said, "and interpretation another. Shall I explain to the best of my understanding?"

"Absolutely," Lucca replied as she took a seat and pulled out her notebook. Nadia abandoned the paper and looked on expectantly.

Melchior set the original document in front of him and began, "Much of this is based off the research we did together, which makes it much easier for me to understand his connections. He seems to have concluded that time can only be traversed by going outside of it—basically, that a portal is not so much a tunnel through time as a path around it. Instead of trying to ford the river, one builds a bridge."

Lucca nodded. "So the energy isn't focused directly against the timestream."

"Correct. By assuming that different, timeless planes exist, one can create paths without hollowing out the space-time continuum. Observe." He tapped his finger against the top of the table, then waved his hand in the air before maneuvering it underneath the wood. "Convenient, yes? Otherwise, I'd have to drill a hole through a piece of furniture that I'm otherwise quite fond of."

Nadia perked up. "So all we have to do is get outside time, and we can go wherever we want?"

"Theoretically, yes," Melchior replied, "but the amount of energy required to transcend to and return from another plane would be enormous, to say nothing of the strength of will required to navigate it. It would be well beyond human capabilities."

Lucca twirled her pen and said, "But if you happened to be a super-powered alien parasite or a dying planet—"

"Theoretically, perhaps." Clearly Melchior didn't want to pursue that line of thought. "But what _is_ within the grasp of humanity is the ability to exploit pre-existing tunnels. Belthasar sought to apply aerodynamic laws to the navigation of these paths, which, I believe, would explain most of the stranger references here."

A hastily sketched visual aid captured the gist of the idea, and a slight modification brought it into line with Lucca's experience. "I've got one for you," she said, closing her notebook and holding it parallel to the table. "Let's say I want to get through here. So I make a bridge, right?" Lucca tapped the top of the notebook with her free hand, then swooped around to tap it from the bottom. "Well, if this thing's moving, then my path would only work for an instant. Kind of a one-way ticket." She raised the notebook, leaving her free hand stranded. "But if this other plane is moving parallel to ours..."

Melchior nodded as her hand followed the notebook upward, darting easily from top to bottom along the way. "That's what Belthasar seems to have decided. Rather than serving as gateways between two specific events, these passages would allow one to traverse a given span of time."

_And if some Gates didn't come out red, we could leave things there._ Lucca steepled her fingers in front of her as she asked, "So how do we explain the portals that _do_ connect specific events?"

"Butlers?" suggested Nadia. When Lucca and Melchior turned to stare at her, she gave them a sheepish grin. "I was feeling left out."

Melchior quirked an eyebrow at her before turning back to Lucca and saying, "I assume that you have evidence of such a thing, correct?" At her nod, he continued, "Then I won't waste time trying to disprove it. The best answer I can offer based on these notes is that Belthasar discusses 'planes' in the plural. If we posit the existence of a static plane..."

"Then we're still off in wild theory land, but at least we have a working model." Lucca scrawled a few more lines in her notebook before reaching for Melchior's page of translations. "I know I was going to ask about something else."

Nadia raised her hand. "The 'shells' thing. What's that about?"

"On that count, I am less certain." Melchior indicated the portion of the sheet that he had accused of being populated by pictographs. "They might refer to something needed to travel through the timeless planes, most likely some sort of psychological or spiritual protection. Something to amplify one's willpower to superhuman levels, perhaps."

_Dreamstone._ The thought had scarcely crossed Lucca's mind before she wrote it down, then surrounded it with pyramids for good measure. _What was it Masa and Mune said? That they embody dreams?_ It was only the faintest shadow of an idea, but all she had to do now was experiment with light sources until the silhouette came clear.

Lucca's foot tapped erratically as she returned the papers and pen to her knapsack. "Thanks," she said, barely managing to conceal a grin of anticipated accomplishment. "You have no idea how much this helps."

"I'm almost afraid I do." Melchior lowered his glasses and gave her a hard look. "Be careful with Dreamstone."

"Will do." Lucca stood, waited until Nadia had offered her own thanks, and started for the door.

They were almost out when Nadia snapped her fingers. Sliding her empty quiver off her back, she dashed back to Melchior and asked, "So do you sell arrows?"

 

Lucca managed to reclaim her gun once Nadia grudgingly admitted that she had enough ammunition to last for a while, but there was no need to have bothered. The cave turned out to be populated solely by rodents, none of which did anything more threatening than squeak and dart away.

"Well, there _used_ to be a monster in here," Lucca said as they came to the end. "Big. Blue. Very pointy."

Nadia grinned. "Kinda like that boulder, huh?"

"No, seriously, there was. I just can't remember its name."

"Rocky?" Before Lucca could protest, Nadia added, "Nah, I believe you. I'm pretty sure this place got cleared out a few years ago after something ate one of our ambassadors."

Lucca snorted as she swung her legs over edge of the whirlpool. "And you say international relations are boring." The water tugged at her boots like an eager puppy, and she had a fleeting fancy of her footwear being flung out ahead of her. _My own little harbingers._

Giving the pool a skeptical look, Nadia asked, "Are you sure this works?"

"Yeah. I just don't remember what the trip's like." Before rationality could intrude, Lucca took a deep breath and slid down into the vortex.

One painful bout of disorientation later, she was coughing and sputtering on a wet patch of grass, trying to determine which direction all the gravity was coming from. _Okay, so I probably didn't forget that so much as repress it._

A high-pitched noise announced that Nadia had followed. Still wheezing, Lucca sat up to watch the princess make a spectacular airborne arc before crash-landing several feet away. Loose quarrels rained down after her.

"Eight-point-five," Lucca said. "Clumsy dismount."

Nadia groaned, coughed up a mouthful of water, and rolled over onto her back. After a moment of staring dazedly at the sky, she broke into a grin and announced, "That was _fun_!"

"You worry me." Deciding that she had regained enough of her balance, Lucca stood and began gathering the scattered arrows. The squelching sounds at her feet alerted her to a more immediate problem, and she sat back down to remove her water-logged boots.

Nadia sat up and stretched her legs in front of her, clearing her throat as she pointed at her sandals.

"Enjoy it now," Lucca muttered. "Next stop's the Cursed Woods." Once she'd poured the seawater from her boots, she stood and tried to wring out her clothing. None of her efforts made her feel any less briny.

"At least the muffins are okay." Nadia retrieved a handful of quarrels and added, "You think we'll be dry by the time we get to Frog's place?"

They were still dripping when they trudged through Leene Square, where they ruined the mood of at least one romantic picnic, and they were still noticeably damp when they crossed Zenan Bridge, where the leader waved them through before Nadia could open her mouth. The unpleasant moistness of it all would have bothered Lucca much more if she hadn't been so intent on dredging up memories of Dreamstone.

As they reached the marshlands around the Cursed Woods, Nadia asked, "So are you depressed-quiet, tired-quiet, or crazy-scheming-quiet?"

"Got it in three." Lucca paused to swat a mosquito. "It's not really a scheme yet, though. I'll let you know when it's time to argue again." Before Nadia could take offense, she said, "But what matters now is getting Frog to leave his self-pity party."

Nadia clapsed her hands behind her back and looked thoughtful. "Are frogs ticklish?"

"Right. So I'll handle the talking."

When they reached the bushes that obscured the entrance to Frog's hovel, Lucca cupped her hands around her mouth and called down, "We're back!" The warning was for everyone's benefit; if Frog was sulking, he would have a chance to compose himself, and if he was on alert, he would be less likely to commit random acts of self-defense.

"After you," said Nadia. "Since you're talking."

Lucca descended the ladder slowly, trying not to let her expectations run too far in either direction. Her thoughts drifted instead to a foggier version of her childhood, to a day when Crono had inadvertently discovered her fear of frogs. "I don't get it," he had said, in a voice that Lucca could no longer imagine. "What's so scary about frogs, anyway?"

She hadn't told him, because she didn't know how to explain the terror of seeing something fat and green spring out of a mud puddle toward her face. Coming as it did right on the heels of her jack-in-the-box trauma, the incident had left Lucca a very skittish three-year-old.

But the truth had been too embarrassing for a twelve-year-old to admit, so she had told Crono that frogs carried leprosy and sucked blood like leeches. Their next science class had been interesting.

 

_At least the jack-in-the-box thing went away after Dad helped me dismantle one. Maybe I should have done that frog dissection, after all._

 

Lucca threw the emergency brake on that train of thought as she reached the bottom of the ladder. As casually as she could, she turned and called, "Anybody home?"

Although it took her eyes a moment to adjust, Lucca noted that the gloom was nowhere near as pervasive as it had been on her last visit. Thick candles had been arranged so as to illuminate every corner of the room, and the dirt floor had been raked smooth. The flash of light on steel caught her eye, and Lucca followed it to find Frog standing tall at the head of his table, his sword drawn in salute.

He met her gaze steadily. "For Cyrus."

The proper response was probably to return the salute in somber heroic silence, but Lucca counted it an amazing display of restraint that she didn't squeal and snatch him up in a hug. Instead she grinned and said, "I've missed you."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Nadia darted forward in a white blur, stopping just short of tackling Frog. "We were so worried," she gushed, "and I'm so glad you're not crazy or trying to kill us or just moping in the corner like..." She trailed off as Lucca cleared her throat, then straightened and put on her most regal expression. "You're a true knight."

Frog bowed and said, "Waste not such precious words on me," but his tone evinced more etiquette than self-loathing. In the flickering light, his kneeling form looked almost human, and Nadia's disheveled hair and clothing appeared smooth. With a little calligraphy, they might have made an epilogue.

_And that's why we leave it at "happily ever after."_ Not wanting to inject her cynicism into the moment, Lucca crept into the corner near Frog's bed. Exactly where he kept the Masamune's hilt was a lost memory, but she could make an educated guess.

The conversation resumed behind her.

"I had considered that thou wouldst not return."

"Yeah, sorry about that. We were a little held up." All the sovereignty had gone from Nadia's tone, but Lucca preferred it that way. The sound of crinkling plastic filled the air. "Muffin?"

As Frog politely declined, Lucca swept her arm under his bed until her fingers brushed against a wooden box. She drew it out carefully into the light to find that it was made of polished teak and showed no signs of neglect. _So how often do you torture yourself with this thing?_ she wanted to ask, but the question was much too cruel to voice. Besides, Lucca heard a tiny voice in the back of her head whispering something about glass houses and stones.

The box opened silently on its well-oiled hinges, revealing contents that gleamed against a dark piece of velvet. Gently, almost reverently, Lucca wrapped the cloth around the Masamune's hilt before lifting it. The sudden lack of voices alerted her to the fact that Frog and Nadia had noticed what she was doing.

Frog's voice was dry. "Shall I assume that thou hast good reason to meddle with my possessions?"

"Don't get mad at her," said Nadia. "Lucca's got this thing where she's not good with people."

"Do _not_," Lucca returned before realizing that she wasn't helping her case. "Well, Nadia's got it too. We have the combined social skills of an adolescent chimp."

"Actually, I'd say we're more of an orangutan."

"On a mad quest for bananas."

"And true love."

"Of bananas."

Frog looked from one girl to the other before sighing in resignation. "'Tis of no consequence. What need hast thou of the Masamune's remains?"

_Half the remains, you mean._ "I have an idea," Lucca said, turning the hilt so that the jagged remains of the blade caught the candlelight. "Who's up for a trip to the Denadoro Mountains?"


	9. Chapter 9

Most of what Lucca remembered about the Denadoro Mountains was wind-related, mixed in with a few assorted memories of setting wooden clubs on fire. Her vindictive side had enjoyed the suddenly unarmed goblins' facial expressions perhaps more than was ethical.

While there were still Mystics living in the area around the falls, they no longer had the feel of a military detachment meant to keep any would-be heroes away from their leader's publicly acknowledged weakness. Most of them ran for cover, but there were enough aggressive ones to impede the group's progress.

_Feels like old times,_ Lucca reflected as Nadia shot a retaliatory arrow at a freelancer who had been pelting the group with rocks. _Three crazy kids out to change the world._

"Lucca! Beware!"

She spun in time to see a bright blur cut through the distance between her back and a charging goblin. As the creature gurgled and tumbled backward in a spray of blood, Frog gave her a disapproving look. "Lower thy guard and thou art—"

"Deadeth?" Lucca hoped her grin was cheeky enough to hide how shaken she was. "Thanks for watching my back."

As Frog nodded and hopped off to scout ahead, she wondered how much of his enthusiasm for fighting served as a distraction from the memories that sang through the wind and rippled through the pools. Lucca would have staked her glasses on his having not been near the mountain range in the last eleven years, but he led the way now as easily if the map were drawn on his translucent set of eyelids. Obsession had carved every detail into his mind.

No matter how much Lucca obsessed, her carvings were whittled away. She wondered if envy was appropriate.

_But no obsessing now. Obsessing gets us hit with hammers._ Yelling for Nadia to stop trading volleys with the freelancers, Lucca followed Frog's trail into a shadowed grove.

Something flickered in the darkness. Lucca threw a handful of fire at it and was rewarded by a furious howl and a flash of burning wood. Before the goblin could collect itself, Frog leapt across the grove and brought his sword down in a decisive slash.

Lucca blew the imaginary smoke off her forefinger and said, "Guard un-lowered," before noticing Frog's expression.

"How came thou by such powers?" he asked. "Art thou a witch?"

"Nope. She's got the wrong kind of hat for it." Nadia paused to navigate a tricky section of roots before adding, "I think she learned it from some kind of super-kilwala."

Lucca nodded. "Er, more or less. But then that never actually happened, so I've concluded that magic is purely mental. Or spiritual, if you buy into that kind of thing."

Shaking his head, Frog turned and began to pick his way through the trees. "An uncanny pair, ye are. Hast thou any further revelations?"

_You spared the guy who killed Cyrus and cursed you, and the bastard never even apologized._ Out loud Lucca replied, "Well, you can create light by passing an electric current through a tungsten wire, diseases are caused by microscopic organisms, and the world ends in a little under fourteen hundred years."

"Not if we do something about it." Nadia shuddered as she brushed a fern out of her way. "I never want to see that future again."

Frog started to reply, but his voice trailed off as the group emerged into the sunlight on a grassy promontory that overlooked the heart of the Denadoro Falls. While Lucca didn't feel any emotional connection to the area, she could almost hear Frog's thoughts echoed in the roar of the water. The winds grew so strong that her overshirt threatened to come unbelted and fly away.

Nadia tapped her on the shoulder and whispered, "Is he okay?"

Before Lucca could answer, a gust caught Frog's cape and sent it billowing dramatically into her face. By the time she'd disentangled herself, Nadia was spitting the ends of her ponytail out of her mouth, and the moment was thoroughly ruined.

Frog shook his head as if clearing it, then shifted his grip on his sword and said, "Let us proceed."

As they followed the natural bridge of the land toward a small cliff, Lucca caught herself peering over the edge at the distant pools. _He said he fell. How the heck did he survive that?_ Her musings were cut short when the wind tore past with such force that she almost lost her footing.

Nadia's hand closed around her forearm. "Gotcha," she said, then sputtered on a mouthful of hair. "Bleh. How come all your ideas are about places like this? When do we get to go to the beach or something?"

"Hey, I already took you to the beach, remember? Not my fault the water was a little funny."

"When we open up those adventurers' spas, yours isn't going to have a travel agency."

Another gust sent both girls scrambling for their balance. From just ahead, Frog called, "Press onward! Surely yon cliff affordeth shelter!"

"That's easy for you to say, Mr. Low-Center-of-Gravity," Lucca muttered, putting a protective hand over her helmet. The grass and weeds whipped at her ankles as she fought her way forward. Frog had already reached the cliff, and Lucca concentrated on closing the gap between them. _Two yards. Five feet. Four—_

The scream of the wind was suddenly overpowered by Nadia's shriek as she grabbed Lucca's waist, dragging Lucca with her to the ground but saving herself from being swept over the edge. Before Nadia could try to get to her feet again, Lucca shouted, "Stay down! Crawl!"

"Thine hand!" Frog's voice was almost swallowed by the winds, but the message of his outstretched arm was clear enough. His other hand dug into the edge of the hollow he had found in the cliff face. With Nadia clinging to her legs, Lucca struggled forward and grabbed his wrist.

However much Frog might have despised his curse, it made him far stronger than anyone his size should have been. The muscles of his arms were visibly strained, but he managed to drag both girls into the shallow refuge. Outside, the wind raged more furiously than ever.

"What's going on?" Nadia called over the tumult. Her knuckles were white against the rock, and her hair framed her face like a burst halo.

Lucca pressed herself tightly against the cliff. "Nothing good."

By now the tempest had lost all semblance of a natural storm; gale-force winds blasted the area with more malice than mere chaos could account for, and even Lucca's limited knowledge of meteorology made it clear that the laws of weather had not been consulted during the storm's creation.

"This wind evoketh an ill feeling in me," Frog said. "Methinks there be something of the eldritch in it."

Nadia raised her eyebrows. "Isn't that some kind of tree?"

As Frog and Nadia attempted to bridge their communication gap, Lucca braced her feet against the stone and tried to collect her thoughts. Something unpleasantly magical was afoot, but while she felt that the cause should have been obvious, she couldn't seem to pull it into focus. What was it that had been guarding the Masamune?

Then the connection clicked in Lucca's memory, in form of a grinning but strange-eyed little boy who ran through a cavern with his arms spread like wings. _"I'm the wind! Whoosh!"_

"The sword's protecting itself!" she shouted over a gust. Another loose piece wiggled and fell into place: "What the hell did Tata do with the Hero Medal?"

"The what?" Nadia shouted back as Frog flinched.

As far as Lucca could recall, Tata had acquired the medal when Frog dropped it in Porre's café, and possession had passed to her group after Tata learned that being a hero involved being on the wrong end of a lot of murderous rage. Without a scrappy band of teenagers (or, more accurately, two teenagers and a robot) to show up and deliver the medal into the right hands, there was no telling who might have taken it.

As the storm subsided to a dull but still menacing roar, Lucca said, "I think whoever came after the sword last put them on their guard."

Nadia frowned. "You mean a bad guy tried to steal it?"

"I don't think the sword understands good and evil. Not the way we do, at any rate." Something Mune had said stuck with Lucca, about how what mattered wasn't who owned the sword but rather how it was used. Given her other interactions with the sword's spirits, Lucca suspected that the deciding factor was strength of will rather than nobility of purpose.

Suddenly the wind was reassuring. At least the blade was still unclaimed.

"'Tis a weapon, lass, though an enchanted one," Frog said to Nadia. "Even the noblest instrument may be turned to ill purpose if wicked hands wield it."

As if in answer, a blast of wind tore past the hollow, carrying an unlucky tree branch. Lucca mentally scratched "scale ladder during lull" from her list of ideas.

Nadia peered around the edge of the rock. "There went the eldritch."

As the wind calmed in preparation for its next assault, Lucca fumbled with her knapsack and withdrew the velvet-wrapped hilt of the Masamune. "Hey!" she shouted, waving the jagged edge out in the open. "We brought the rest of the sword! We're trying to—"

The gale resumed so suddenly that it almost tore the hilt from Lucca's hand before she could snatch her arm back under the cover of the cliff. Shooting a dirty look at the air, she passed the sword's remains to Frog and said, "Your turn."

No sooner had her fingers left the leather handle than the winds died. Biting her lip, Lucca tapped a finger against the hilt, resulting in a tiny burst of wind. Drumming her fingers on the pommel created a series of staccato squalls.

"Guess you're the golden boy," she remarked, just before Nadia touched the hilt and failed to cause any climatic reaction.

As Lucca crossed her arms and muttered rude things about the universe in general, Frog held up a hand to stay Nadia and took a cautious step into the open. The only disturbance in the air came from the waterfalls.

Nadia followed, keeping one hand against the cliff face. "Well," she said, glancing back at Lucca, "I guess we were due for something creepy."

_So who put the "Kick me, I broke history" sign on my back?_ Keeping an ear out for any surprise tempests, Lucca crept out of the hollow and clung to Nadia's arm in what she hoped was a casually dignified manner. The flicker of amusement on Frog's face told her that she'd missed her mark.

At least it was amusement, she reflected during her halting progress up the rope ladder, and not suspicion. For all his veneration of the Masamune, Frog seemed to have remarkably few delusions regarding its nature. The sword's spirits had no more moral constraints than machines did.

Lucca desperately wanted to be dealing with machines, with wires and switches and a binary system that reduced the supernatural to an unambiguous zero.

"Uh, Lucca?" said Nadia. "I can't feel my fingers."

Realizing that they had come to the entrance of the Masamune's cave, Lucca relinquished Nadia's arm and called, "Masa? Mune? Hello?"

The zephyr that tickled her ear almost sent Lucca scrambling for cover until she noticed the child-sized figure running around the cavern, backlit by the sunbeams that bathed the Masamune from above. _Just playing. Okay._ Beside her, Frog made a small noise in his throat and strode toward the broken blade.

Nadia pointed ahead and whispered, "So is that one of the freaky sword people?"

"Yeah. Mune, I think." Insisting to herself that she was no longer a target for the sword's hostility, Lucca followed Frog toward the world's largest extant piece of Dreamstone.

As soon as she stepped into the light, Mune darted over to her, let his arms fall to his sides, and fixed her with eyes that betrayed an otherwise convincing human form. The sclerae extended over the area where the irises should have been, encroaching on pupils that neither dilated nor contracted with the light.

"Well, hi, there," cooed Nadia, who apparently hadn't noticed that Mune was more creepy than cute. Her pendant swung forward as she bent down to his level. "Do you want a muffin? We've got apple-cinnamon, walnut, and—"

"Thought so." Mune's voice was a perfect replica of a child's, which only made his tone more unnerving. "Oh, big brooother..."

Lucca drew her gun and hissed, "No muffins. Weapons."

"Aye," added Frog, without taking his gaze from the area where an identical child had appeared. "Whosoever would seek the legendary blade must first be proven worthy of wielding it. When last I did trespass upon this ground—"

"You didn't talk like such a buffoon," said Masa, strolling past Frog to stare up at Lucca. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Lucca didn't realize she hadn't answered until Nadia said, "She kinda blew up history. But we're fixing it now."

"Are you?" Masa shook his head. "She's very upset with you."

Mune snorted. "Humans! How did anything so silly survive for so long?"

Indignation restored Lucca's voice. "Look," she snapped, "what's done is done. We're trying to set things right now, so if you know anything about what's going on—"

Masa shrugged. "The Time Axis is out of alignment."

Nadia put her hands on her hips. "Aha! Ernie said that, too! So you _do_ know something!"

"We already told you what we know." Mune backed away from the group until he stood at the edge of the light. Breezes washed back and forth over Lucca, as if the cave were breathing. "What now, big brother?"

Before Masa could reply, Lucca said, "Oh, no, you don't. If you know about the Time Axis, and if you can connect it to me, odds are you know a lot more than you're telling."

Frog shook his head. "Perchance not. The Masamune discerneth the spirit of all who approach it. 'Tis not unnatural it should comprehend the weight of thine heart."

"Quite right," said Masa, from where he had joined his brother. "We knew something was wrong before you arrived, but your presence told us what. 'The Assassin of Time' has a good ring to it, wouldn't you say?"

Mune nodded. "Yeah. The best assassins are catspaws."

In a more sensible world, Masa and Mune would have been non-existent and therefore infinitely less of a headache. Lucca took a deep breath and said, "Look. I get that you're pissed off at me, but I'm trying to fix things. So just hop back into that sword and stop playing the meteorological mambo every time I touch it, and maybe we can get the Time Axis straightened back out. Okay?"

The space around Masa and Mune exploded into a tempest of light. By the time Lucca could see again, the spirits had assumed their more alien forms and begun to bob expectantly in place. That Masa's feet never quite connected with the floor didn't seem to impede his movement.

"The usual?" asked Mune. His child's voice was gone, replaced by what sounded like a coalition of echoes.

"Of course." Masa's voice was distinct from his brother's only in texture, as if his echoes had been born in caverns instead of between canyon walls. "This should be entertaining."

Frog dropped into a fighting stance, raising his sword. Nadia followed suit with her crossbow. As Mune crowed his approval of his brother's idea, Lucca threw a pre-emptive fireball at his head.

There was a chaotic moment during which Frog rebuked her, Mune patted the flames out of his robe, Lucca defended the distinction between "cheating" and "showing initiative," and Nadia, with a quick shrug, shot a quarrel at Masa.

"Heh, I like them!" said Mune, shooting a white whorl of energy from his palms. Frog dissipated the energy with a stroke of his sword and used the motion to close the distance between himself and his opponent.

After checking that Nadia was keeping Masa busy, Lucca began building up a stronger wave of magic. Her frustration made the process quicker. _This is a waste of time. Stupid brawlers._

An unexpected flicker caught her eye. Before she could react, Masa's fist slammed into her gut with diaphragm-crushing force. Lucca's body jackknifed as she staggered backward. A wild blast from her gun failed to do any damage but interrupted his follow-up attack.

"Back off!" shouted Nadia, clubbing Masa over the head with her crossbow. Lucca took the chance to unleash the energy she'd stored in the form of a giant tongue of flame. Panting, she watched Masa spin away in a fiery dance, trying to extinguish himself.

A gale burst from the corner where Frog continued to slash at Mune. Lucca wouldn't have needed to watch to know what came next; the wind only exacerbated the burning, Mune's distraction gave Frog the opening he needed, and both spirits let out a howl as the cavern flashed white again.

"Not bad," said Masa as Lucca's vision began to clear. He and Mune appeared uninjured, and nothing in Masa's tone indicated that he had been recently set on fire. "Now let's get serious."

Mune whooped. "All right! Time to—"

"Don't bother," Lucca cut in, rather more testily than she had intended. "You just tried to blow your brother out like a birthday candle. Clearly I have the scientific advantage here."

Masa clucked his tongue. "Clearly _someone_ doesn't understand the meaning of 'test.'"

"'Tis a trial as much of spirit as of strength, lass," said Frog. He showed no signs of exhaustion despite his intense single-combat with Mune, and Lucca felt a twinge of athletic jealousy. "One's true heart is oft laid bare in times of conflict."

Mune laughed. "Another point for the green guy. He's come a long way."

"But we've all got plenty of spirit," said Nadia, holding her arms out to demonstrate. "If you had any idea what we've gone through—"

"You're human," Masa interrupted. "You don't have time to go through much at all."

Lucca seized on the opening. "Exactly! We _don't_ have time! Don't you want to save the planet?"

In a remarkably human gesture, Mune rolled his eyes. "You're such funny creatures. Lifespans like blinks, and you still manage to make such an impact on everything."

"We're not helping you," Masa added. "We're helping _her_. And maybe the frog."

Nadia blinked. "Who, me?"

The spirits laughed. "And so very arrogant," said Mune.

"Yeah, it's kind of endearing." Masa turned to Lucca with a wry smile. "You don't want to prove yourself here? Then prove yourself as you go. Show us you've got real strength of will, not just guilt and pure bloody stubbornness. Call us when you've had a turn in the crucible."

As Lucca sputtered angrily, Masa drifted back to the edge of the light and spun in a tight circle. His brother joined him.

"So what now?" asked Mune, hopping anxiously from foot to foot. "Will they fix us? Can they fix anything?"

Masa shrugged. "Maybe. Here's their chance."

Then there was another flash, and Lucca was still blinking the spots from her eyes as Frog walked forward and knelt beside the remains of the blade. "Cyrus's hopes and dreams," he said quietly, "and mayhap all the world's, as well..."

"That's what I'm banking on." Hesitantly, Lucca reached out to tap the blade and tried not to look too relieved when nothing blew her out of the cavern.

Nadia cheered. "Yay! They trust you now!"

_Betcha they still wouldn't let me carry them._ Aloud she replied, "Well, if you can't trust Lucca the Great to save the world, who can you trust?" _Crono._

Lucca's thoughts weren't going anywhere helpful, so she turned to Nadia as Frog began to wrap the blade for less potentially lethal transport. "They're a real pain," she said, wiping a smudge off her glasses. "Obviously they want the planet saved, but they still wanted to pick a fight and slow us down. Idiots."

"Why do they want to help save the world, though?" asked Nadia. "I thought you said they didn't care about good and evil."

"Sure, but they were born from Dreamstone. The planet matters to them." As Frog stood, holding both halves of the Masamune, Lucca added, "You'll have to carry them. I don't think they want me to."

Without a word, Frog removed his cape and fashioned a rather handy bag from it. Lucca was about to compliment him on his ingenuity when she realized how distant his eyes were. A slight frown played at the corner of his mouth. Was he remembering the thrill of victory, short-lived as it was? Or was he measuring his current companions against Cyrus?

Distractions were Nadia's province. No matter how many angles of approach Lucca considered, she couldn't think of any conversation starters that didn't involve Frog's personal tragedy or her own. _I want to break the ice, not drop a glacier on his head._

Lucca elbowed Nadia and hissed, "Say something. He's brooding."

After a moment's hesitation, Nadia scampered over to Frog and beamed. "So are you ticklish?"

 

The group's mood had lightened by the time they reached the base of the mountains. Nadia seemed to have evaluated the quest as an unmitigated success, and her enthusiasm made it difficult to dwell on anything negative. Frog must have taken Masa and Mune's approval to heart, as his demeanor almost matched that of the Frog who had hopped fearlessly into Magus's castle.

While Lucca supposed the group could have demanded that Masa and Mune let them ride the wind back to the plains, she hadn't been willing to find out whether the spirits would send her careening into a cliff face out of spite. Their blame didn't strike her as entirely fair, either; it wasn't as if Lucca had opened the Red Gate herself, and she suspected that her guilty conscience made her seem more culpable to an outside observer.

Consciences, she decided, were never meant to have outside observers. Least of all amoral, aggressively pro-planet observers.

"Hey," Nadia whispered as Frog led the way back to Zenan Bridge, "how old is he?"

Lucca took a moment to connect math and memory. "About twenty-six. I think he said he was fifteen when Cyrus died."

"Really? He sounds older."

"Amphibification can do that to you."

"Okay, I'm calling you on that one. There's no way that's a word."

Lucca grinned. "It should be. Why'd you want to know, anyway?"

"Just curious." Nadia squirmed under Lucca's look. "Okay, fine. I'm wondering if he might be really cute."

Lucca's effort to feign disapproval turned into a snicker. "Well, Princess, why don't you kiss him and find out?"

Nadia's cheeks bloomed red. "Lucca!" she chided, then added in a brighter tone, "Do you think it would work?"

"Nah. It didn't in the old timeline."

As Nadia blushed crimson and demanded to know the context, Lucca noticed that Frog had stopped walking and had turned to face them.

"'Tis an uneasy thing," he said, "to have two maidens whisper and cavort at thy back."

Lucca almost apologized before she picked up on the humor in his voice. "Oh, really? Most guys probably wouldn't mind too much."

Frog laughed, and Lucca realized how much she'd missed the curious croaking sound. "Incorrigible, ye are," he said. "Pray walk at my side."

As the girls did so, Nadia peered at Lucca over Frog's head and mouthed, "Kiss?"

A lazy grin spread over Lucca's face. "You know what?" she drawled. "I don't think Nadia _ever_ told me what happened with the real Renaldo."

Frog glanced at the princess. "Thy swain, perchance?"

"Nothing!" Nadia said, too loudly. "Nothing, nothing, nothing..."

The usual detachment of troops was gathered expectantly at the end of the bridge. One of them appeared to be running a betting pool, but Lucca couldn't begin to guess which aspect of her and Nadia's visits they intended to use as gambling fodder.

"Halt!" said the leader, rather wearily. He squinted at Frog. "Who's going there this time?"

Nadia grinned. "Our uncle."

A fascinated silence descended over the troops, and the leader sighed. "I might have known. Proceed."

Although he seemed irked by the lapse in Guardian security, Frog hopped after Lucca as she and Nadia headed toward the far end of the bridge. Behind them, the leader muttered, "I wish I was still stationed in Truce."

"'Were,'" corrected his subordinate. "The subjunctive mood—"

There came a smacking sound and a yelp, followed by a distant splash and a lot of shouting.

Nadia's eyes widened. "Just keep walking," Lucca said under her breath.

Frog let out an amphibian snort. "Such folly would ne'er have prevailed under Cyrus's watch."

"You keep walking, too," Lucca said before realizing that he had stopped to set down his bag. In the next instant Frog had leapt over the railing and dived into the water below. "Right. Just like that. Am I the only one who remembers we're in kind of a hurry here?"

Nadia gave her a sharp look and said, "Rats," before running to peer over the edge of the bridge.

_So was that crazy other-Lucca, or was that just me?_ Frowning, Lucca lifted the Masamune's sack just long enough to feel the wind push her away, then slumped against the railing. "What are you looking at?" she snapped at the lone solider who hadn't joined the panicked throng. "I never wanted to be the hero. I was doing just fine as the brilliant, show-stealing sidekick."

Still scowling, Lucca watched as Frog bore the fallen soldier to the rocky beach below, where several of his comrades were already rushing to meet him. At least she'd have enough time to collect herself before Frog climbed back up.

 

"Of course it's not dangerous," Lucca insisted, tapping the Gate Key against her palm. "Ayla could use the old one, and she never figured out silverware."

Frog continued to regard both her and the Gate from a safe distance. "How hast thou wrought such a thing?"

After the awkward silence on the way to Truce Canyon, Lucca had expected things to be simpler once the group reached the Gate, even if experience had taught her that time travel tended to encourage questions. Frog's curiosity probably wouldn't have bothered her as much if he hadn't still been damp from his impromptu swim.

At least she had a solid theory to explain. "The Gate is a point at which the space-time fabric separating our plane from a timeless, parallel one has been breached, and the Gate Key—"

"Forget all that," Nadia interrupted. "Just think of that thing as a magic wand, and everything makes sense."

"I should hesitate to employ such a bold word as 'sense.'"

"Okay, then just think of it as a magic wand, and your head hurts less."

Lucca cleared her throat. "Getting back to the point," she said, "all you have to do is enter the unlocking sequence and hit the activation button while pointing this thing at a Gate. Hey, pay attention! You both need to know how to do this!"

Nadia raised her eyebrows. "Why? You're the genius."

_Because I don't trust myself to stay stable._ "Because we have to be prepared for anything. See the number pad?" Lucca pointed out the area on the device before continuing, "The buttons aren't labeled, but they represent numbers one through nine. The top row is one through three, the middle row is four through six, and I don't have to tell you what the bottom row is, do I?"

Frog shook his head. "Consider thou not this to be needlessly complex?"

"Compared to your grammar? Not really." Lucca turned the Gate Key to give her friends a better view of the buttons. "And it's not that complicated. The access code is 2-3-5-7." When they only nodded politely, she sighed and said, "I picked it so it'd be easy to remember. Am I the only one here who does prime numbers?"

"I don't see why we _need_ a secret code," said Nadia. Frog concurred.

A touch impatiently, Lucca replied, "The original Gate Key got stolen once, and I was panicking the whole time because any idiot could have accidentally pointed it the wrong way and started ripping up history. So I added a code to this one. Just in case." Waking up to be confronted not only with her first hangover but also with the possibility of being trapped in the prehistoric era was a memory Lucca doubted she'd ever lose, no mattered how hard she tried.

"'Tis quite sensible of thee, then," Frog offered.

Lucca tapped the white button just above the number pad. "And this is the activation button. Got all that? Good. Who wants to volunteer?"

Nadia waved her hand overhead. "Ooh! Ooh! Pick me!"

"Go for it." As soon as Lucca handed her the device, Nadia keyed in the code with a flourish and hit the activation button with her thumb. The Gate yawned open, to Nadia's visible delight and Frog's vocal surprise.

"One hundred percent safe," Lucca reassured him. "No witchcraft or devilry."

Frog straightened up and nodded. "I shall take thee at thy word, then. Shall we advance?"

As she caught herself after being tossed out in Leene Square, Lucca noticed that Frog did a commendable job of keeping his balance after his first trip through time. There was something to be said for a warrior's reflexes, even if Lucca was in no rush to acquire them. And she didn't need them, of course. Reflexes were for people who didn't think far enough ahead.

"Ahh, home, sweet home!" Nadia grinned and surveyed the lower tiers of Leene Square as if she hadn't seen them quite recently. The sun was already beginning to set, so at least she didn't startle any picnickers.

Frog took a probatory step and blinked at the cobblestoned plaza, which had taken on a reddish cast in the evening light. "Four centuries," he murmured, "in a single breath. 'Tis wondrous beyond all reckoning."

Nadia giggled. "If you think _that_ was cool, wait till you see a blender. Oh, and ice cream! Let's go show him ice cream!"

"We're not on vacation," Lucca said, catching Nadia by the arm before she could dash off in search of modern conveniences. _We're here on my personal wild-goose chase._ "We're here because we might have a shot at fixing everything." To Nadia's reproachful look, she sighed and added, "Okay, we can stop for ice cream, but you have to eat it while we walk."

Confronted by an exciting array of unfamiliar terms, Frog redirected the conversation. "By the by, to what end do we now labor? Never didst thou confide thine intentions for the Masamune."

"It's going to take some explaining," replied Lucca, heading toward the steps to the lower plaza, "so I'll talk on the way." Once she had confirmed that Frog and Nadia were following, she continued, "When we saved the world before, everything kicked off because Nadia's pendant set off a reaction with my matter transportation and activated a Gate. I built the first Gate Key around the principle of using concentrated electrical pulses to—"

Frog coughed politely.

"Right," said Lucca, deflating a bit. "Anyway, what happened with the Telepod was that the pendant acted as a catalyst to amplify the electrical energy and I'm doing it again, aren't I?" When Nadia and Frog expressed agreement, she sighed and said, "Let's just say that the pendant makes energy more powerful. Later I found out that this was because it was made of Dreamstone. Which is, I might add, also what the Masamune is made of."

The lack of footsteps alerted Lucca to a problem. Turning, she saw that Frog had stopped at the base of Leene's Bell and was gazing up at the arch.

"'To my beloved Queen Leene, 600 AD," he read aloud. "'May our prayers for peace ring on for eternity.'"

Lucca tapped her foot. "Yes, very optimistic of them. Are you—"

Frog looked slowly around the plaza, as if drinking in every detail. "'Tis indeed the future. To think all this was once untamed wilderness..." With a bright laugh, he resumed walking. "The kingdom I dearly love hath flourished, and her people have prospered. 'Tis more than dreams have dared."

Nadia beamed. "I told you you'd like it."

"Anyway," said Lucca, crossing her arms, "we're going to make a Gate."

That got their attention.

Nadia held up a hand. "Okay, woah. I caught some of what you were talking to Melchior about, and I'm pretty sure he said human beings can't do that. Fire Goddess Lucca is _not_ a real goddess."

"All Melchior said was that the energy needed to breach and navigate the timeless planes was beyond human capabilties. So I'm bringing in some superhuman energy enhancers."

"The Masamune," Frog deduced.

Nadia's hand flew to her pendant. "Lucca, have you lost your mind? How could we even make sure it went to the right time?"

Lucca shrugged. "That's the easy part, actually. Dreamstone seems to be pretty much condensed willpower. Just grab a piece and hope like hell you end up at the moment that needs to be changed."

Nadia tightened her grip on the pendant and said, "Okay, see, when _I_ think an idea is crazy—"

"Just trust me. Please."

There was a moment's silence before Nadia nodded and let her hand fall to her side. Putting on a determined smile, she said, "Well, I guess it might be kinda fun."

"Someone approacheth!" Frog's sharp whisper came as a shock against the quiet of the empty plaza. "By appearance a man, now running hither in great haste."

Lucca spent too long squinting into the distance before spotting the figure rushing across the lower plaza. She cursed under her breath. While the angle of the stairs probably blocked Frog and Nadia from any view from below, the man's speed could only mean that Lucca, standing too close to the steps, had been spotted.

"Hide in the bushes," she whispered, in a tone that brooked no arguments and had an equal intolerance for questions. "Hurry! Let me handle this!"

Nadia's ponytail had scarcely disappeared when the footsteps indicated that their creator had reached the stairs and was no doubt taking them two at a time. Lucca turned to face the noise and tried not to look furtive.

The man charged up into the plaza, where he towered over Lucca with an almost tangible aura of righteous indignation. "Lucca Marie Ashtear! Where in God's name have you been? Your mother and I have been worried sick!"

Any bright ideas for disentangling herself burned out. With what she hoped was a suitably contrite expression, Lucca looked up and squeaked, "Hi, Dad."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The phrase "The Assassin of Time" and the second part of the inscription on Leene's Bell have been gleefully lifted from Chrono Cross, if only because I'm such a reference junkie. Lucca owes her middle name to Marie Curie for pretty much the same reason. :)


	10. Chapter 10

"Your mother," Taban continued, with no sign of being appeased or even appeasable, "has been absolutely frantic. She wanted the castle guards looking for you. The guards, Lucca! If they weren't so busy trying to find the princess, they would be combing all of Guardia for you!"

His face was turning an apoplectic purple, so Lucca said, "Breathe, Dad."

Taban's nostrils flared like a bull's as he did so. "And I," he went on, his voice falling with each syllable, "have been so worried about—" Abruptly he snatched her up in a rib-splintering hug, all but sobbing into her shoulder. "Oh, sweetie, I'm so glad you're safe!"

"Er, I missed you, too, Dad."

While the wrath of Taban was great and terrible to behold, it had the sort of half-life usually reserved for elements found at the bottom of the Periodic Table. Lucca wriggled to make room for her lungs to expand and said, "Really, I'm fine. You know I—" _No, actually, I don't just take off sometimes. I only leave the house to go hiking with Dad or to terrify the local merchants._ "You know I can take care of myself," she finished instead, lamely.

Her father gave her a skeptical look as he set her down. "Where on earth have you been all week?"

"Dancing topless in Porre" was on the tip of her tongue, but Lucca suspected that now was not the time for sarcasm. "Making friends," she replied instead, which was at least partly true. She just hoped that it didn't sound too far-fetched.

There was a stiff pause. "That's wonderful, sweetie," Taban said at length, in a tone that added, "Criminals and drug addicts are taking advantage of my baby."

"Nothing's wrong," Lucca insisted. Making a clean getaway was becoming increasingly unlikely. "There's just something that I need to take care of."

The look that darted over that her father's features told her that this had been entirely the wrong approach. "I think you should come home for now," Taban said, catching her hand in a grip that was only slightly too gentle to be vise-like. "I'll make you some dinner, okay? Then you can lie down for a bit."

Having ruled out escape, Lucca turned her thoughts to subterfuge. _Oh, the hell with it. He already thinks I'm crazy._

"You know what I like?" she said, talking as loudly and emphatically as she dared as Taban led her down the steps. "I like those romance novels where the guy WAITS outside the WINDOW after DARK and maybe brings some ROPE."

Taban gave her a concerned look. "Er, why's that, sweetie?"

She shrugged and forced herself not to glance back at Frog and Nadia's hiding place. "I dunno. Hijinks usually ensue."

He set his free hand on her forehead and frowned. "You don't _feel_ feverish."

"Maybe it's a STEALTHY fever. Like the kind of fever that DOESN'T GET CAUGHT."

By the time they made it home, Lucca was struggling not to peek over her shoulder with each step to make sure that Frog and Nadia weren't following her in the open. If the princess caught the eye of any guards, trying to retrieve her from the castle would probably make breaking Crono out of prison look like a quiet game of bridge.

Lucca considered, then retracted the comparison on the grounds that she had once walked in on her mother's bridge club.

Hoping that Nadia remembered the path to her house well enough to find it again on her own, Lucca put on her best well-adjusted face as her father opened the front door and ushered her into the kitchen.

"Lucca!" Her mother was sitting at the table, her eyes red and rimmed with dark circles. "Don't you _ever_ run off like that again! We've been so worried about you!" The next sentence was garbled by sobs as Lara caught her daughter in an iron embrace.

"Mrmph," Lucca said into her mother's neck, hoping that it would be interpreted as an apology.

Grabbing her daughter by the shoulders, Lara held her at arm's length, sniffled, and said, "I don't know _what_ got into you, young lady. We give you everything we can, and I don't know why you—"

"Lara," Taban warned.

"Well, for God's sake, dear, it has to be said." Lara's fingers dug in tighter. "She needs some of kind of help, and I just don't know what to do. She's my own daughter, and I don't know what to _do_ with her."

As the ranting and crying began in earnest, Lucca's least favorite set of memories told her that this was by no means an isolated outburst. Guilt squeezed her chest.

"I'm really sorry," she managed, but her voice was drowned in a sea of arguments. Her mother's grip was beginning to hurt.

Events began to fall together in her mind, filling the gaps left by Crono. There had been enough notes from teachers to wallpaper a room, all beginning, "Your daughter is academically brilliant, but we're worried..." There had been innumerable conferences with coaches who despaired of sparking any enthusiasm for teamwork in her. And there had been far too many complaints from peers and parents and anyone else unlucky enough to be standing nearby when she decided to conduct an experiment. As far as Lucca could tell, few incidents had been followed by an apology, let alone an admission that human welfare should ever impede scientific inquiry.

 

_Of course Mom's a nervous wreck. Anyone would be._

 

Lara's hold slackened amidst a series of whimpers. "What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to help her when I can't even—"

"Shh," Taban soothed, lifting her in his arms. "We'll talk about it tomorrow, okay? We can work through this." With a small nod to Lucca, he carried his wife toward the upstairs bedroom. Lara sounded too exhausted even to protest that he was patronizing her.

Lucca touched the sore spots on her arms, then sat down heavily at the table. There were practical reasons not to get up and sneak away now (among them, the problem of finding Frog and Nadia before her father went looking for her again), but they weren't as compelling as the ones that made Lucca sink further into her seat.

Several minutes later her father returned, looking haggard. "It's okay, sweetie," he said, patting her on the shoulder. "Everything looks better in the morning. Let me heat you up some dinner, and then you can get some sleep."

As he rummaged for leftovers in the fridge, Lucca drooped over the table and sighed. "It's not okay, Dad. I've been so wrapped up in myself that I've been destroying your lives."

"Lucca..." Taban sighed as he set down the plate he'd been preparing. "Nobody's life is easy. But your mother and I love you very much, and we never want you to blame yourself when times are tough."

Nesting her head in her arms, Lucca muttered, "But it really _is_ my fault. All of this is my fault."

She felt her helmet lifted from her head, followed by a gentle tousling of her hair. "We can talk about everything tomorrow, sweetie. You just get some rest tonight." There was a rattling sound before he added, "And you should take your medicine now."

Lucca's head shot up. A protest almost made it past her lips before the relevant memories began to leak through, reminding her that she was supposed to swallow a little white capsule every morning. "I don't need medicine," she said, in a tone that neatly undermined her point.

Taban sighed. "Sweetie, we just tried that, remember? We let you go a whole week without your pills, and then you ran away from home."

"I didn't—I'm not—" Lucca paused to collect herself. _Okay, so throwing a fit isn't going to help my case._ In what she hoped was a calm, reasonable tone, she said, "I'm just really tired tonight, Dad. Could we start the pills again tomorrow?"

"Lucca, you know how you get when you don't—"

"Please."

With another, longer sigh, Taban said, "Well, if that's what you think is best. First thing tomorrow, though."

Neither of them spoke again until Taban set a plate of steaming vegetables and casserole in front of her, along with a glass of orange juice. Not even the heavy feeling in Lucca's stomach could overcome the need to eat something other than muffins. Despite her hunger, everything tasted bitter.

Taban escorted her up to her bedroom in what Lucca felt was an annoying show of concern. Once he had tucked her in and turned out the lights, Lucca waited to hear his footsteps disappear down the hall, then crept out of bed and dressed herself in the dark. As comfortable as her pajamas were, she didn't intend to save the world in them. The forces of space and time would not bend for orange tartan.

After fishing the keyring out of her desk drawer, Lucca donned her helmet and eased open her bedroom window. Her backyard was silent save for the singing of crickets and frogs, and the moonlight only vaguely delineated the trees, bushes, and almost barn-sized shed.

Just as she was settling in to wait, Lucca noticed that one of the frogs sounded a little... off. She reached back for her pillow and waved it out the window like a flag.

Rustling came from the bushes nearest her window, followed by two moving collections of highlights and shadows. Lucca waved the pillow in a way that, in her opinion, represented a query about rope.

The odd croak out developed an apologetic pitch.

After a speculative glance at the nearest tree, Lucca stripped the sheets from her bed and began tying them together at the ends. At least her love of hiking and camping had been consistant throughout her realities; she had no trouble remembering how to tie a good square knot.

Careful not to make any suspicious noises, she secured one end of the makeshift rope to her bed, tossed the other out the window, and started to climb. She managed it easily except for a sudden vertiginous moment halfway down. The sheets ran out several feet too soon, but Frog obligingly caught Lucca when she let herself drop.

"You okay?" whispered Nadia. "We know you wanted rope, but we couldn't find any on the way here..."

Lucca shrugged. "I'm just glad you didn't get yourself caught. And I'm about as okay as anyone can be after finding out they're a clinically insane homewrecker. You?"

"Dwell not upon it," Frog said gently. "What doth it profit thee to contemplate guilt when the time hath come for action?"

"You're one to talk."

Nadia shook her head. "Don't beat yourself up over it. The stuff crazy other-Lucca did isn't your fault."

Her words hit the raw part of the issue, and Lucca couldn't stop herself from snapping, "Yes, it _is_. It's not like Crono made me a completely different person—he just brought out the best in me, and it looks like loneliness brought out the worst. This thing I'm turning into is still _me_."

"Verily," replied Frog, over Nadia's protests. "Yet nary a soul on this earth is free of inner darkness. 'Tis choice that secerneth the blessed from the damned."

"Exactly," said Lucca. "And I chose wrong."

Nadia looked thoughtful. "I'm not really sure what he just said, but I think he means you still have to choose who you are _now_. Maybe it's really hard, but you have a choice. Otherwise, I'd be wearing a froofy dress and watching people bow all day."

Lucca looked from one friend to the other and managed a quirk of a smile. "Okay, guys, no fair ganging up on me. And we need to get moving. The shed's—" she had to glance around— "this way."

"And what's in the shed?" asked Nadia as they stole toward it.

The accepted change in topic came as a relief. "Our big source of electrical energy. Unless my memories are seriously getting warped, I built the Telepod in this timeline, too. So we're going to move it somewhere more convenient and see if we can't make a Gate."

Competing recollections told Lucca that the shed door was both squeaky and well-oiled, so she decided to err on the side of caution as the group reached it. "Anyway," she continued, digging the key out of her knapsack, "Dad and I did a lot of work on combustion engines, and I'm pretty sure we put together at least one working transport vehicle. So first..."

Lucca trailed off, finding it suddenly difficult to fit the key into the lock. The flashes of moonlight on the doorknob were almost dizzying.

"Art thou unwell?" asked Frog as Nadia took over unlocking duties.

"I'm fine," Lucca replied, shaking her head to clear it. "It's been a rough day." Keeping a steadying hand on the wall, Lucca pulled the door open and slipped inside.

The only light came in through the window, creating a jumble of shadows that seemed almost to squirm. Lucca had trouble focusing away from them.

_Telepod,_ she reminded herself. _That's what we're here for._ Squinting at the crazy pools of light, Lucca discerned the shape of the pods near the middle of the shed. She stumbled over to them and clapped a hand to the left one.

"This is the..." Lucca trailed off as something fuzzy snaked through her brain, temporarily disorienting her. "This is the Telepod," she managed once she'd shaken her head. "We need this, so let's load it up."

"On what?" asked Nadia.

It didn't seem important. Taking long, languid, steps, Lucca made her way to the nearest successful-looking vehicle, a steam-powered wagon. The Telepod would probably fit on it, but Lucca was having trouble believing that the Telepod wouldn't fit in her pocket, if she could only be bothered to pick it up.

The image amused her, so she laughed.

Frog gave her a stern look. "Thou art most certainly not well."

"She's acting a little crazy," Nadia agreed. "And not just mad-scientist-crazy, either."

_Dad drugged me,_ Lucca realized, and the sheer absurdity of the thought made her laugh again.

Nadia caught her before a bench ran into her shins. "Seriously, what's wrong with you?"

"I think," Lucca began, then decided that she'd reached a good stopping point.

There was an intriguingly liquid pause.

"She speaketh as one ensorcelled," Frog said, frowning in a way that Lucca found almost giggle-worthy. "Dwelleth a warlock nigh?"

Nadia shook her head. "We don't have warlocks anymore. I think they're extinct."

"Nope, no warlocks," Lucca agreed. Something nipped at her mind, and she decided that it was important to add, "Dad said I take medicine. I think he put it in my food."

Nadia winced. "Um, what kind of medicine?"

Lucca tilted her head from side to side as she considered. "Sedatives," she said at last. "And maybe something... for my mood." Holding out words pleased her on a level she couldn't quite understand. "I think he gave me extra."

"Oh, dear." Nadia waved her hand in front of Lucca's face, which seemed to call for an agreeable smile. "Lucca, we really need your brainpower here! Frog and I don't have a clue how any of this works!"

"Right. Riiight. Right-t-t." The "t"s were especially fun. Still smiling, Lucca walked her fingers along her chosen vehicle and idly released the handbrake. "This works. Unless the boiler's empty. Emmmpty. Hmm."

Moonlight fell in around her, gleaming as it tripped across the various metal surfaces. When Lucca moved her head, she felt as if she were inside a monochromatic kaleidoscope. Insignificant background noises lulled her toward a deep, warm darkness.

Sharp pats registered on her cheeks. "Wake up!" said a silvery smear that seemed to have Nadia's voice. "We don't even know what this thing is! Is it some kind of carriage or—are you even listening to me?"

Lucca smiled. "Everything," she announced, "is very simple right now."

It became even simpler when it all went black.

 

A sharp movement jarred Lucca awake. The first thing she noticed was that the sun was glaring directly into her eyes; the second, that her mouth felt as if she'd spent the night chewing on dirty laundry. It took her a moment to work out the third thing that was wrong, until another jolt went through her and Frog's voice said, "Mine apologies! 'Tis an uneven road we now tread!"

"Hna?" Lucca inquired. "Whazz?" Sitting up made her dizzy, but it also gave her a view of the wooded countryside, the dirt road, and the steam-powered wagon, on which she was crammed with the pieces of the Telepod and the Masamune and behind which Frog was acting as an external motor.

"Good morning!" Nadia chirped. Lucca turned to see her sitting in the driver's seat, where she had a death-grip on the tiller. "I think we've got this thing figured out, so—left turn!—so you can go back to sleep if you want."

Before Lucca could say anything, Nadia yanked the tiller hard to the left. The Telepod rattled as the wagon turned to follow the trail deeper into the forest.

It was probably best to start with the obvious. "Where the heck are we going?"

Without taking her eyes off the road, Nadia replied, "Well, you were kinda off in happy-drug-land last night, so we had to kinda guess what you were trying to do, and we kinda figured Sandorino had _something_ to do with it, so..."

Lucca blinked. "That's... actually not a bad idea. As long as we're playing with wacky metaphysics, it couldn't hurt to go to the source of the problem." _Not to mention we've got a head start before Dad tracks me down._

"Good," replied Nadia, "'cause I think we're almost there." After curving left with the road, she added, "I don't get what's so great about this thing. I mean, I have to steer it for Frog, and it's got that huge metal thingy stuck on the front."

A glowing lecture on the benefits of automated motion filled Lucca's brain, but it was hushed down by visions of trying to demonstrate the technology on a narrow road and consequently crashing into a tree. Besides, she wasn't certain that she'd chosen the functional steam wagon instead of the entertaining-in-retrospect prototype.

Lucca shrugged. "Well, I wasn't exactly in my right mind when I picked it."

The road smoothed slightly as they continued, until it merged with one of the outlying streets of Sandorino. Dim memories told Lucca that this was the northern edge of town, not far from the Zenan Strait, and that she had only mildly disturbed the nice old man at the camping supplies store.

As the wagon coasted to a stop, Nadia asked, "Okay, now what?"

"If 'twould be not too troublesome," said Frog, hopping into the seat beside Nadia, "I should confess to a rather pressing thirst."

"Er, sorry about that." Lucca dug a water bottle from her bag and passed it to him. "And thanks for doing the leg work." After taking a quick inventory of the Telepod's parts and confirming that they were all present, she said, "We need somewhere with plenty of space to do this. It'll take me a while to hook everything up, so it can't be somewhere where people could interrupt us. Especially not people who've already had the Lucca Ashtear experience."

Frog looked up from his water. "Nor guards, I might venture, lest Nadia be identified. Indeed, if I am to be at thy side, 'twould behoove us to avoid all observers."

They both turned expectantly to Nadia.

After a moment's thought, she brightened. "Oh, I know just the place!"

Efforts to get more information were met with a smile and "It's a surprise," so Frog hopped down to push the wagon again while Lucca took up a look-out position in the back. Fortunately, Sandorino's population was concentrated toward the south, and the northern shore made too poor of a beach to attract visitors. Only a few scattered houses were visible through the trees.

If Lucca's sense of direction was at all accurate, they were heading east, toward the Denadoro Mountains. The already sparse settlements dwindled further as they went along, as if the people instinctively knew better than to live in the shadow of the peaks. _And two timelines ago, they'd have been dead right._

The trail grew rougher, wandering deeper into the woods and farther from anyone who cared how overgrown it had become. At last, with a cry of "Surprise!" Nadia steered the wagon into an open area.

The remains of a large house lay a short distance to the east, but Nadia's destination was probably the large, untended park that lay just before them. Multiple species of vines wound their way up a tall, wrought-iron fence that extended into thick patches of trees, and the gate hung halfway open, as if it had been caught in an eternal moment of indecision.

An iron frame arched over the gate, and the rusted words wrought into it proclaimed the area to be the "Sarah J. Arden Memorial Park." Smaller lettering beneath it added, "Est. 823 AD. 'Every child deserves love'."

"No one ever comes here," Nadia said as she and Frog navigated the wagon through the gap. "There's a big park in the middle of the city where everyone hangs out, so I guess they just forgot about this one."

"The gardeners certainly did," Lucca remarked. There were still a few polite suggestions about where everything was supposed to go, but the flora couldn't be bothered with them.

From behind the wagon, Frog said, "Yet 'tis a welcoming place. I feel mine heart at ease."

Lucca's heart wasn't at ease, but she didn't see any reason to share that.

Eventually Nadia called for a halt. They had reached a less wildly organic field at the center of the park, where the wooden benches were well on their way to mulch and a number of playground attractions were following close behind. The grass was shorter here, and oak trees both shaded the area and blocked the view from every direction but the one from which the group had arrived.

Near the center of the field was a bronze statue, half-obscured by the shadows of the trees. Between the dappled light and the distance, it took Lucca a moment to realize that the figure depicted was an elderly woman with a variety pack of children gathered around her. The plaque on the base was too small to read from far away, but Lucca assumed that it contained a platitude of the pithiest order.

"I've always liked her," Nadia said, gesturing at the statue. "She just looks so happy to see those kids, and you're going to think this is silly, but I used to come here all the time after I got into fights with my father."

Lucca shook her head. "That's not silly, that's... kind of sad."

Meanwhile, Frog made his way to the statue and polished the plaque with his glove. "By this account," he said, "being ne'er blessed with babes of her own, she did turn to the fostering of those bereft of family."

Nadia joined him and nodded. "Yep. I think that old house outside was her orphanage."

_Great. Why couldn't Sandorino be a town full of baby-eating lawyers?_ Crossing her arms against the tightness in her chest, Lucca said, "Okay, good for her. Can someone help me unload the Telepod?"

 

Untangling the wires was difficult under the benevolent gaze of Sarah J. Arden. Frog and Nadia had gone to keep watch at the gate once there was nothing else that they could help with, leaving Lucca to curse under her breath and swat away the occasional insect as she took care of the detail work. By the time she had the twin power generators connected, Lucca had the bizarre sense that the bronze children were staring at her back.

"Look," she said aloud, turning to face the statue and feeling quite stupid for it, "I'm sure you made the world a better place and all, but that doesn't matter if Lavos ends up destroying everything. If I have to choose between a nice old lady and all life on this planet, I'm damn well going with life." As she went back to her calibrations, she added, "It's nothing personal."

After double-checking all of her connections, Lucca plucked an acorn from the waves of grass and set it on the left pod. For the sake of showmanship, the halves of the Telepod were meant to be placed up to thirty feet apart, requiring two people to man them. But as long as the pods were side-by-side, they presented no particular challenge to a single operator. Lucca cracked her knuckles and set to work.

As energy crackled through the machine, the acorn spun as if it were in a centrifuge before bursting into a shower of lights, which reassembled themselves on the right pod. Lucca allowed herself a small grin of triumph. Sarah J. Arden was unimpressed.

_Bad Lucca,_ she chided herself as she went to fetch her friends. _No fuzzy thinking._ But living in the middle of a massive paradox made it difficult to keep things in focus.

She found Frog and Nadia hiding behind separate bushes, keeping an oddly somber vigil over the park's entrance. "The Telepod's ready," Lucca said as brightly as she could. "All we have to do now is crank up the power, toss in some magic, and channel it all through the Dreamstone."

The heavy mood persisted as they rose to follow her. Clenching her fists, Lucca stopped and said, "If you've got something to say, just go ahead and say it."

"Well, you know," began Nadia, in a voice that promised another revolution through a hopelessly circular argument, "if the planet gave you that Gate, it probably wasn't trying to kill itself, right? So saving Sandorino must have been okay. It must have been something else you did."

Lucca turned to face her and sighed. "You still think it was Ozzie, don't you?"

"Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? Maybe his grandson saved Crono's grandfather or something."

"In my experience, the Ozzie family doesn't go around saving humans."

"Maybe it was an accident."

Before Lucca could point out how ludicrous that idea was, Frog said, "I must agree with Nadia. Should her intuition prove true, countless lives might be spared."

Lucca consciously relaxed her hands and forced her voice to stay level. "Look, I can't just risk the whole world on a hunch. The only thing we know for certain is that if Sandorino burns, the world is saved. We may not like it, but that's just how it is."

Frog shook his head. "Nay, for more is at stake in this matter than thou hast acknowledged. Evil begetteth not righteousness, nor can justice come of murder."

"Do you think I _want_ them to die?" Lucca's fists re-clenched without her permission. "Do you think I don't hate this? You can go on all you want about good and evil and all that crap, but something's got to be sacrificed."

"People," said Nadia sharply. "Not something. _People._"

Lucca turned and resumed walking. "You know what? None of this matters. We don't even know where the Gate's going to lead. Heck, we don't know if there's going to _be_ a Gate. So let's just concentrate on making on a path to the moment that has to change, and we can argue once we find out what that moment is."

There was a pause before Nadia rested her hand on Lucca's shoulder. "Um, one thing. You said someone had to grab the Dreamstone and hope, right? So maybe—"

"I shouldn't be the one to do it?" Lucca glanced back at her and managed a smile. "Yeah, I know. I figured Frog should be the one, since the sword likes him best."

"'Twould be an honor," he replied, "though 'tis no stain upon thine."

_Yeah, right._ But aloud she said, "We should get going. Sure, this place is in the middle of nowhere, but there's no way Dad isn't already looking for me."

Once they arrived back at the Telepod, Lucca swept the acorn off the right pod and gestured for Frog to set the Masamune on the left. "Your pendant?" she said before noticing that Nadia's eyes were watering.

"Right here," the princess replied, slipping the necklace over her head with a tiny smile. "And I—"

Lucca held up a hand. "Whoa, there. If this doesn't work, we'll feel pretty stupid about—"

"Oh, I don't care." Nadia's arms darted in and caught her in a quick but powerful hug. "You're the best friends I've ever had! No matter what happens, I'm really happy I met you." As Lucca tried to get her breath back, Nadia bent down to embrace Frog. "I mean it. Even with all of the really terrible things, this has been the best week of my life."

_Good to know I'm not the only dysfunctional one here._ Accepting the pendant from Nadia, Lucca placed it on the left pod between the halves of the Masamune. Behind her, Frog said, "Aye. Come what may, I am honored to have traveled with ye."

Lucca felt that something was expected of her, so she looked up with the best smile she could manage. "Thanks. I owe you guys everything." The words felt uncomfortably final. Clearing her throat, Lucca forced some confidence into her tone and said, "Okay, then, kids, we've got three good-sized chunks of Dreamstone, some high-quality science, and the kind of magic that cooked Lavos in his own shell. Seems to me we can make something here."

A quick set of instructions had Frog removing his gloves to hover his webbed fingers over the sword and pendant, while a more detailed, rhyming set had Nadia grasping the basics of the capacitor's controls.

With a short nod, Lucca rolled up her sleeves and said, "Well, this is it."

The whir of the Telepod's generators reached Lucca's ears as she let magic well up beneath her right palm. Taking careful aim, she splayed her fingers and fed three concentrated, continuous lines of fire into the parts of the Dreamstone that were not blocked by Frog's hands. Frying the Telepod would bring all their plans to a screeching halt, and she didn't imagine that Frog would appreciate being scorched, either.

"Right high, left low," Nadia chanted under her breath, "watch the red, take it slow..."

Electricity arced between the generators, eliciting a short scream from their operator. Before Lucca could say anything, Nadia composed herself and continued tweaking the dials.

_The moment that matters._ But that wasn't how Lucca had phrased it; she had called it "the moment that has to change," because all moments mattered in the same way that every drop of water mattered in a pool, where a single pebble could shift them all away in ever-widening circles.

Frog's eyes were closed. At least, Lucca reflected, she had chosen someone who could focus in her stead. _'Cause I'd have us all hip-deep in a duck pond by now._

Into the edge of Lucca's hearing crept a sharp whine, one that triggered a fractured memory of red hair spinning against a deep blue field. _No, we want a red field, a red shift as we all spin away from each other._ The Dreamstone glowed white with heat.

Suddenly the glow broke free of the sword and pendant, rising into the space where something should have been breaking down for transmission. Ripples pulsed out into the air.

_Almost._ Lucca's thoughts tripped over one another in a rush. _Almost, almost, c'mon..._

"Cyrus," Frog whispered, "aid me."

The ripples turned to throbs, spreading only a matter of inches before they were pulled back to their origin. The distortion took the form of a writhing sphere. If Lucca concentrated, she could almost imagine the tunnel cutting through the timeless plane, rushing backward from its destination, straining against the fabric of reality—

The distortion ripped open with a shriek. Lucca staggered back and covered her ears, trying to ignore the feeling that time was being sucked into a vacuum. As the echo faded, her brain connected it simultaneously to nascent portals, dying aliens, and everyone she never knew enough to save.

There was a long silence as all things living and inanimate were bathed in red.

"Omigod," Nadia squeaked. "Did we—" Apparently realizing that there was no need to finish the question, she shook her head and bent down to retrieve her pendant. "Oh, my God," she said again, more articulately.

Frog lifted the halves of the Masamune with a soft word of gratitude, and it occurred to Lucca that she should do something other than gape.

"We did it?" she said, a question mark sliding out on the end of the sentence. "We really did it." Stating the obvious seemed important, as if the miracle would wither away without a show of faith. _Which is even fuzzier thinking than apologizing to a statue._ Lucca shook her head. "I mean, of course we did it. No plan can fail with Lucca the Great behind it."

Nadia made a noise that almost passed for a cheer.

"Come what may," said Frog, and Lucca swallowed the lump in her throat as she raised the Gate Key and immersed them all in red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note**: Lucca's steam-powered wagon is based on the one invented by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1769. Cugnot deserves credit not only for building what is often considered the first automobile, but also for having what is often considered the first automobile accident.


	11. Chapter 11

Lucca's hold on the Gate Key tightened as the red gave way to an abundance of brown and green. A tangle of tree roots met her feet, sending her scrambling for something to save her balance. Her free hand caught Nadia and brought both girls crashing to the ground.

"Be thou sure of foot," said Frog, taking Lucca's hand and pulling her up. "The earth proveth treacherous."

"So I've noticed."

As Frog helped her to her feet, Nadia asked, "So where—when are we?"

"Not about to set Sandorino on fire," Lucca replied, squinting at the area. It seemed familiar in a way that she couldn't quite place, but the dense underbrush and haphazard trees clearly weren't part of Fiona's forest. The trunks were too gnarled, the land beneath them too rocky. Lucca's next breath told her that the air was thin, which narrowed the field down to "mountains."

Nadia bounced, albeit carefully. "Okay! Let's find Renaldo and get him away from Jill!"

"Prithee hold." Frog spoke as if he had been half-strangled. In the ensuing silence, Lucca detected the dull roar of water, carried on a rush of wind.

Realization hit her like a series of jabs to the gut: _the moment that has to change_—_ Cyrus's hopes and dreams_—_ be careful with Dreamstone_—

Lucca kicked the nearest tree so fiercely that her entire leg rattled.

"What is it?" Nadia's voice was a step away from panic. "Guys, what's wrong?"

From beneath them rose an anguished cry and the sound of shattering metal. Frog darted forward into the bracken before Lucca could catch him.

_Dammit!_ There was no sense in calling after him, so Lucca gritted her teeth and set off in pursuit.

The undergrowth was thick and scraggy, biting at her bare calves as she ran. Twice an exposed root caught her foot, and the second one sent her tripping forward into the open. In the time it took her to catch herself, Lucca saw that she was on a narrow, rocky ledge, at the tip of which Frog stood with a rigidity that was broken only by the visible twitching of his muscles.

"Don't do anything stupid," Lucca said under her breath, working her way toward him. "Don't do it, don't do it..."

At the moment she reached him, a war cry echoed up from below. Frog's arms tensed.

Judging by how loud the sound was, the ledge couldn't have been very high above the site of the battle. Yelling at Frog would only guarantee disaster. Instead Lucca whispered, "Don't even—"

An explosion of magic cut her off. Cringing, Lucca looked over the edge to see flames engulf a figure in golden armor, then blast him back toward a screaming boy. The world reddened as supernatural energy drank and distorted the sunlight.

Frog staggered back from the edge. "Cyrus," he croaked, as if his throat were lined with rust, "oh, Cyrus, forgive me..."

_I'm sorry,_ Lucca wanted to say, but her voice was gone. _I'm sorry for bringing you here, and I'm sorry for assuming you'd snap._ Her fingers clenched the Gate Key until they were almost numb. _And I'm even sorrier for thinking I knew what I was doing._

Footsteps pounded out of the trees. Before Lucca could stop her, Nadia slipped on the loose stones and slid sideways with a yelp.

The sound jolted Frog from his grief. Rushing to intercept, he caught Nadia in the crook of his elbow. The rocks beneath her scattered over the edge.

"Ohshit." Lucca's voice returned as a squeak. "Get off the cliff!"

A shower of ice burst up from below, borne on frigid winds. Each chunk glittered crazily with crimson and violet light. Between the flashes and the darkening of the sky, it took Lucca a wild moment to distinguish the edge of the tree cover from the edge of the cliff.

Goose bumps rippled up her neck. An instinctive dodge to the right saved Lucca from a jagged block of ice but cost her her balance. As she tried to scramble back to her feet, a frozen chunk crashed into her wrist.

Lucca bit back a cry as her fingers fell open in a explosion of shocked nerve endings. The Gate Key went spinning over the edge.

Frog hooked his free arm around her waist and pulled her into the brush, but Lucca was only dimly aware of it. _I lost the Gate Key. I lost the goddamn Gate Key, and we're stuck in the wrong moment, and we can't get home._ Part of her wanted to scream in frustration and didn't particularly care that the action could prove suicidal.

A pained gasp alerted her to another problem, and she turned to see Frog doubling over as a blue glow enveloped his chest.

"I mean she's _gone_," Crono had said. "There was this blue light, and—look, I don't know, you're the smart one."

Nadia looked wildly from Frog to Lucca as the glow intensified. "What's happening to him?"

"Paradox." The part of Lucca that wanted to scream was in direct competition with another that wanted to laugh until everything dissolved, and between them her voice was taking on a manic pitch. "The same thing that happened to Marle. We can't—" All the jagged little pieces inside her came to a compromise, and Lucca choked on a sob.

Nadia said something, too loudly, about how she wasn't going to let that happen, gripping Frog's hands as if she could hold him against time. The air hummed.

"I..." Frog's voice was thin and ragged. "I failed thee—"

"Stop it!" Lucca grabbed his arms, which had already grown translucent. "You never failed us!"

Frog tried to speak again, but the light overcame him in a silent burst of azure-white shrapnel.

_Like the Telepod, only all the little lights won't have anywhere to go home to._ The thought rode out in a moment of shock, and in the next Lucca hated herself for thinking it. Curses caught in her throat.

But when the dazzle cleared, the lights still hovered in front of her.

"Frog?" Nadia whispered, sniffling. "Are you—"

The lights began to whirl around each other in spirals and eddies. A pattern emerged, and Lucca scarcely had time to recognize the emergent shape before the world flashed white again.

When her vision returned, Lucca saw a wiry man, clad in raddled leather armor, huddling against the bushes. Moss-colored hair wilted over his eyes and shoulders.

Nadia made a sound that resonated with any number of emotions. Lower lip quaking, she reached out tentatively to touch his hand. "Frog? Is that you?"

_If it's not, the space-time continuum is in even worse shape than I thought._ Lucca held her breath as the man raised his head and blinked.

"This..." The timber was unfamiliar, but his voice had a reassuringly archaic lilt. His next words left no room for doubt: "'Tis like unto mine erstwhile form." Frog (or "Glenn," Lucca supposed, though "Man" might have better fit his naming scheme) gently dislodged his hand from Nadia's and stared at it in wonder. "I am warm," he said in a quiet daze.

"You're also a very fetching pink," Lucca replied, wiping away the last of the evidence that she'd been crying. "And pretty darn lucky. All that chaos must have let your younger self get away instead of killed."

With a distracted nod, Frog turned his bare hand to study it from different angles. Fingernails in particular seemed to fascinate him. Before he could move on to further anatomical marvels, Nadia tackled him with enough force to bury both their upper bodies in the nearest shrub.

Lucca's relief faded as the indistinct sound of voices carried up from below. Glenn must have heard it as well; he jolted upright and hit his forehead against a branch that his amphibian height would have let him avoid.

"Up here!" whispered Nadia, already scrambling up a nearby oak tree. Years of escaping from Guardia Castle came to her aid, and she disappeared into the foliage before Lucca had managed to pull herself up to the lowest limb.

Halfway to the next branch, Lucca heard a dull thud and looked down to see Frog recovering from the conclusion of an unsuccessful leap. His left palm bore testament to the victory of bark over bare skin.

Lucca inclined her head at the lowest branch. "You're tall. Use that."

With a sigh, Frog reached up and took hold of the limb. "'Twill require some adaptation," he said, then grunted as he pulled himself up. "Mine own flesh hath become alien to me."

_So will your memories._ But the rising volume of the voices took priority, so Lucca held her tongue as she joined Nadia in huddling against the trunk. Frog joined them after an awkward moment of figuring out the length of his legs.

The voices reached the level of their cliff, then stopped. A single set of footsteps was audible, and Lucca hoped that it was Magus who had foregone levitation. She had a dim memory of watching him resort to pedestrianism after a particularly taxing battle in the Black Omen, and she could think of no way in which an exhausted Magus would be a bad thing.

The talking resumed:

"Probably just kilwalas," said Ozzie with a dismissive grunt. "This rotten mountain is infested with them."

"Kilwalas," replied a condescending and unpleasantly familiar voice, "look very little like pillars of light."

Lucca had been expecting to hear "you cretin" attached to the end of the sentence, and the omission gave her pause. Her efforts to remember when Magus assumed full authority over the Mystics were cut short when Ozzie spoke again.

"Feh. We should be preparing for a celebration, not chasing pranksters."

The footsteps halted. "Then would you care to explain what kilwalas were doing with this?"

"Dirty, _thieving_ pranksters. We're wasting our time."

The urge to hit her head against the trunk almost overpowered Lucca. _Why, yes, that's _exactly_ how things could be worse. Thanks, universe._ At least she felt a small rush of vindication for putting a security code on the Gate Key. She also felt something slimy creeping down her neck, either because had found herself rooting for Ozzie or because a tree slug had found its way under her scarf. Resolving the issue could wait until it was less likely to result in yelling and thrashing.

Ozzie broke the silence with a snort. "You've tapped yourself out, Magus. Nice work breaking the Masamune and offing that idiot knight, but you gotta know when to quit. You couldn't even hit the kid after that ice storm."

"The little fool wasn't worth my time."

"And that's why you kept tossing fireballs after him, eh?" Ozzie laughed at a cringe-inducing volume. "And just look how long it took you to—" The last word slid into a nervous squeak. "Which is not," Ozzie continued at almost twice his usual speed, "in any way a criticism. Eh-heh."

There was a prickly pause. "Very well," Magus said sharply. "If you're too feeble to keep up, return to the castle. I have more pressing concerns than dinner."

Ozzie muttered for a moment, then adopted a more conciliatory tone. "You could let Flea handle this. He keeps saying he's bored."

Nadia tapped Lucca on the shoulder, then mimed the firing of her crossbow and the resultant death throes of whoever happened to catch the quarrel. Lucca waved her away irritably.

"Hmph," said Magus, who had never, in Lucca's experience, taken a graceful exit gracefully. "It is true that Flea has been inexcusably idle."

As the single set of footsteps retreated, Ozzie broke into sycophantic babbling. The noise faded, swelled briefly when it seemed to be originating from the edge of the cliff, then descended into silence.

"Well," said Lucca, once she was certain they were gone, "at least we know where the Gate Key is." After patting the back of her neck, she added stiffly, "We also know that there is a slug on me. Please get it off."

As Frog reached over to pluck the creature loose, Nadia wrinkled her nose. "Okay, ew."

"Vile creatures," said Frog, without so much as a glance at the gastropod he had just returned to the wild. "To mock nobility and sacrifice, when naught dwelleth in their hearts but cravenness..."

Nadia nodded. "Yeah, I kinda picked up on the evil. So why didn't we—"

"History," Lucca interrupted, "has had enough for one day, thank you." She investigated the trunk with her foot for a moment, then began the slow, clinging process of returning to the ground. "Let's discuss this where the slugs aren't."

Getting Frog out of the tree was simpler than getting him into it, largely on account of gravity. To be fair, Lucca supposed that having innate and acquired reflexes at odds with each other made things tricky, but she couldn't suppress a cringe when Frog tried to land as if his legs were still natural springs. _He needs time to relearn everything, and time is the last thing we can spare._

Nadia offered him a hand. "Um, people-legs don't work like that. Are you okay?"

"Worry not," he replied, letting her assist him to a seat on a stump. "I am sound."

But Frog didn't have enough control over his human facial expressions, and Lucca rushed to steer the conversation away from the mires of psychoanalysis. "So let's recap," she said. "It's 590 AD and Magus has our Gate Key. Even if our Gate home still exists, we have no way of opening it now. And more importantly, there's no telling what kind of havoc Magus could wreak if he figures out what the Gate Key does."

Nadia looked up from where she had been prepared to fuss over Frog and said, "So in other words, we have to get it back from the evil warlock who just tried to kill us." She shrugged. "Still beats the killer robots."

Frog laughed bitterly, the sound oddly thin without a croak behind it. "For a decade did I crave vengeance, for a year did I despair of it, and now 'tis offered me when I have not the strength to take it."

"No vengeance," said Lucca quickly, trying not to envision a timeline more mangled by Magus's absence than by his presence. "Not because you're weak, Frog—you're not, really..." She trailed off. "And it's really weird calling you 'Frog' now. Is 'Glenn' okay?"

He turned away and shook his head. "Pray persist in thy use of 'Frog.'"

"Well, that'll be a little awkward at parties, but I guess we can pretend you're in a band."

"No way," said Nadia, putting her hands on her hips. "You just want us to call you that because you feel like you failed, but you didn't. You didn't do anything wrong. If I hadn't run out there like such a stupid klutz—"

"Which you wouldn't have done if I hadn't panicked." Lucca turned to Frog and added, "I'm sorry I didn't trust you. I was—" _projecting_— "on edge."

"'Twas a not unreasonable fear. E'en now doth mine heart reprove me for following the counsel of my mind."

Lucca shook her head. "What matters is what you did, not how close you came to not doing it." She stopped to review her words. "I mean, what matters is what you _didn't_ do, not how—you know what I'm getting at."

There was a pause as guilt shifted like a restless sleeper.

"Okay, other stuff first," said Nadia, who had apparently decided to let amphibian appellations stand for now. "How'd we end up here?"

Guilt rolled almost audibly over onto Frog. Crossing her arms, Lucca said, "Look, it's nobody's fault. There were too many factors that we couldn't control." _Because no one wants to save the world, just a handful of people who matter._ "And what happened after we got here is a lot more important right now."

She glanced at Frog to find him rubbing at the space between his fingers where webbing had been. His unkempt hair blocked her view of his face, but Lucca didn't need to see his expression to guess at what he was feeling.

"Mine apologies," Frog said hoarsely, then shook his head. He met the girls' looks with a set mouth and steady gaze. His voice was even as he added, "'Tis difficult to comprehend what hath befallen me."

Lucca sighed. "And that's putting it lightly. As far as I can tell, you're still here because you _are_ part of the cause of the current history, and you're human because there's nothing causing you to be an amphibian anymore."

"Weird time stuff," Nadia translated. "So anyway—"

"No, not 'anyway.' This is serious." Lucca hung her head in a way that she hoped demonstrated the gravity of the situation. "When I changed my own history, I came out relatively stable. But Robo got caught in the middle of two major paradoxes, the future's and the forest's, and he ended up—" _erased_— "anchoring the timestream. Since Frog isn't turning into some kind of insane vortex, Robo must be anchoring him, too."

"Uh, knock on wood," Nadia said.

Frog rapped obligingly on his stump.

"So my point," Lucca continued, "is that the timestream can't take much more of this strain. If we keep letting this paradox expand, well... Causality already isn't matching up. It's like something just erases the effects that don't have causes anymore and expects everything to line back up again." She took a moment to follow the line of thought to its end, which wasn't a happy one. "All this can't just be natural law playing out. There's something else meddling in the timestream."

Nadia cleared her throat. "Not that I'm hopelessly lost in all the crazy or anything, but shouldn't we be more worried about the evil warlock meddling?"

"Right. We should probably get off the mountain and figure out what to do about that." After a quick rifle through her knapsack to make sure that nothing had managed to fall out, Lucca added, "Hey, Frog? Would you mind getting the Masamune?"

As he headed deeper into the woods to retrieve the halves of the sword, Lucca tried to calculate the odds of getting herself, Nadia, and a physically disadvantaged Frog into Magus's lair and out again without being killed, let alone without splintering history. Part of Lucca's mind suggested wearing funny hats and face paint, but it was hushed down by the parts that were in no mood for that sort of thing.

 

_Geez, at least the last time I got stuck in history, there was poi._

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Nadia raising and aiming her crossbow into the distance. "I could see them through the leaves," the princess said quietly. "The war won't end for another ten years, will it? And all those people are going to die." Before Lucca could say anything, she shook her head and lowered her weapon. "I don't I think I really could have done it, anyway."

"Look at it this way," said Lucca. "At least the war ends."

Footsteps came from the direction in which Frog had left. He emerged from a patch of bushes and lay his makeshift sack at the foot of the oak tree, then said, "'Tis heavier than I remember."

"Metaphorically or literally?" Lucca asked, before running a quick mental comparison of his biceps to those of the soldiers she could remember meeting. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say your new self didn't spend much time working out."

"I..." Frog closed his eyes in concentration. "'Twould seem I—"

"Don't." Lucca was surprised at the vehemence in her voice. "Don't focus on it." She snatched a blank pad of paper from her bag and shoved it at Frog, along with a pen. "Write down everything about your old life. Write it down _now_ before you lose it."

"She's serious," Nadia chimed in. "She doesn't care how many fleas show up."

It took Lucca a moment to follow that thread back through the conversational tapestry. "Flea," she said, the word serving as a combination correction and curse. "Okay, don't write everything. Just as much as you can in—" she glanced at her bare wrist and caught a flash of memory, of studying Robo's Time Gyro to see if she could pattern a watch after it— "fast. Shoot for a page."

Frog politely but firmly attempted to return Lucca's writing instruments. "Ne'er would I endanger us for the sake of reminiscence."

"It's not just about remembering," Lucca replied. "It's about not losing yourself."

He locked eyes with her for a moment (his were a dark, woodsy green, she noted, and it occurred to her that he might have been handsome if he looked less like a serial refugee), then nodded and slipped away through the trees, opposite the direction of the cliff.

"It's going to be worse for him," Lucca said once Frog seemed to be out of earshot. "I wouldn't be surprised if his memories are already being replaced."

Nadia shivered. "Have I mentioned how creepy that is?"

"Yeah. I'm going to check something." Pursing her lips, Lucca picked her way through the brush and bracken until she re-emerged on the ledge. Rustling indicated that Nadia had decided to follow.

The visible spectrum had sorted itself back out for the most part, but the ice melting on the rock still had a slight violet cast. "Watch your step," Lucca called over her shoulder, then used her foot to nudge a misshapen frozen chunk out of her way. While a humanoid frog had, once upon a collapsed possibility, survived the fall to the base of mountains, she didn't see a human body having the same odds. And there was no supernatural force likely to tip the scales in her favor.

Kneeling carefully, Lucca peered over the edge at the cliff below. Ghosts of smoke still skirled from Cyrus's remains, and a gleam several feet away from him seemed to belong to the Masamune's blade. What was almost certainly the hilt glinted near the cliff's edge. Lucca frowned.

"Huh," she said. "This just keeps getting messier."

"What?" Nadia peered over her shoulder, then drew back with a retching noise. "Oh, God, how can you stand to look?"

"Because we're pretty far away, and I'm working my way toward 'callous bitch.'" Before Nadia could protest her self-assessment, Lucca went on, "But what matters here is that Glenn ran away. In the old timeline, I'm pretty sure Frog returned to put the blade back in the cave and bury Cyrus."

Nadia looked thoughtful. "So you're worried Glenn's going to come back and get killed by Magus's pet bug?"

"Well, _now_ I am. And I need to explain Flea to you at some point." Lucca paused to file that concern under "Great, I Really Didn't Need This," then said, "Glenn's not going to have the same life. He's not strong enough as a human to carry Cyrus's body all the way to—" _where was it, where was it_— "where he carried it. He didn't take the hilt with him over the cliff, either. There is absolutely no reason for Frog and our Masamune to exist here."

"Could you not say that?" said Nadia. "It makes me nervous."

Lucca rose and started back toward the trees, watching her feet to make sure that they didn't rest on anything likely to skid out from beneath her. The ice nearest the edges had begun to melt into thin, dribbling waterfalls.

 

_Messier, indeed._

 

When Marle's appearance had almost caused Leene's death, Marle had vanished. It worked out neatly, from a historical perspective: the queen returned, then vanished, again and forever. Paradox would have been pressed from a loop back into a line.

What bothered Lucca, both at the time and in retrospect, was the pre-emptiveness of it. Leene hadn't died yet, so what had triggered Marle's sudden failure of existence? The precision was suspicious, as well—if Marle had vanished less than a minute earlier, in the presence of a servant, the quest for Leene would have resumed, and time would have coiled up again like a serpent and bit its own tail.

_So who the heck is responsible?_ Lucca envisioned a Gasparesque old man sorting through the pieces of several billion jumbled jigsaw puzzles, trying to get the edges together first and saying "hmm" a lot. Religion struck her as even less sensible than usual.

Or perhaps the pieces were jumbled on scales, and the concern was less that they fit together than that they remained in balance...

The forest grew out of impossibility, but as long as no one knew, it didn't matter where the roots lay. Observation changed things. The loss of memory undid the damage.

But even if a tree could fall silently without anyone around to hear it, a helmeted forehead couldn't run into one without an echoing thunk.

As Lucca tried to pick herself up from the ground, Nadia said, "Wow, are you okay? I didn't think you'd really hit it."

"Mmph." The impact rang in Lucca's ears as she managed sitting. "You could have warned me."

"Nah, you looked pretty out of it." Grinning, Nadia offered her a hand and added, "Lighten up! Smart people walking into things is funny!"

"Funny for who?" Brushing herself off, Lucca glanced at the winner of the collision and noticed the sack—made of an amphibian-sized cape that existed despite all logic—lying at the base of it. She untied the knot and shook out both halves of the sword. Breezes curled along her arms until the metal hit the ground.

Lucca straightened up, put both hands on her hips, glared down at the Masamune, and said, "Get out here. _Now_."

The wind rustled the overhead branches, filtering the light in a rapid succession of new patterns, but no movement came from either piece of the sword.

"You arrogant little bastards." Lucca's voice rose with each word: "If you don't get out here _right now_, I'm gonna bury you so deep in this mountain that—"

Nadia's hand landed on her shoulder. "Lucca, tact. Tact, Lucca. Now that you know each other, try working together!"

"You want tact?" Jabbing her finger back at the Masamune, Lucca turned to face Nadia and said, "Magus has the Gate Key, Frog's going to be an even bigger mess than me before long, the world is still ending, paradox law makes no sense, and _these_ two have to know something about it, but they're not telling. Talk to them."

Nadia frowned, then knelt beside the sword. "Maybe there's nothing they can do," she said after a moment. "I mean, they want this fixed, right? Wouldn't they have done whatever they could?"

The Masamune's silence struck Lucca as more petulant than helpless, but she didn't see any point in pressing the issue. Instead she called, "Hey, Frog?"

Movement rustled the brush that lay in the direction Lucca believed to be north, and a moment later Frog slipped into the relatively less dense vegetation that surrounded the tree. "It falleth yet short of a page," he said. "'Tis an enormous thing to reduce life to words."

"That's why I prefer numbers." Lucca watched as he added the pen and notebook to his makeshift sack, telling herself that she wasn't trying to catch a glimpse of what he'd written. _Nothing but facts and dates? Or the little stories that make the facts worth remembering?_ She doubted she would ever shake the feeling that, for every anecdote she'd scribbled in the margins of her notebook, something more demonstrably important had been sacrificed.

Nadia thought that everything was important. Lucca wondered what her emergency autobiography would look like, then berated herself for considering it.

"Okay," said Nadia, a touch too brightly, "so what now?"

Lucca drew her gun. A glance at her wrist as she did so confirmed that it was already beginning to bruise. "For starters, we get out of here before Flea shows up. Then we track down Glenn and make sure he stays safe." At the flicker passed over Frog's expression, she added, "Not yet. Wait until you've written down as much as you can."

As they began to pick their way through the brush in search of the main path down the mountain, Lucca told herself that magic would allow Flea to travel quickly, not instantaneously. Even assuming that he left castle as soon as he was ordered, she counted on being able to reach the outskirts of Sandorino before Flea began investigating the Denadoro area. But no amount of logical reassurance could keep her throat from tightening at each change in the wind.

The trail turned out to be very low on Mystics. Cyrus had no doubt taken care of most of them, and the sounds of the subsequent battle had probably reminded the rest that there were other things they could be guarding, like the nearest well-stocked Mystic encampment.

Nadia ducked under a low branch, cast a worried look at Frog until he was clear of it, then turned to Lucca and said, "Gold piece for your thoughts."

Lucca gave her a wry look. "I'm trying to remember when anti-depressants were invented."

"My nursemaid used to tell me that gin was nature's anti-depressant. I think that's why she got fired."

"Every time you talk about your home life, I wonder how we made it to our thirty-third Guardia."

Nadia stuck out her tongue, then sobered. "I was just wondering how we're going to get the Gate Key back."

"I'll think of something. I have to."

"You know," said Nadia thoughtfully, "I heard this radio show once where they dressed up like—"

"_No_."

The path curved downward into a shallow basin, where the first splash from Lucca's boot sent a pair of amphibians hopping for cover. She forced herself not to look at Frog's face.

"Well," said Nadia over the roar of the falls, "if all else fails, we can just march on in and kick his butt the way we did in the better world, right?"

Lucca's brain dredged up faint memories of the various but unvaryingly unsuccessful overtures of friendship that Marle had extended to Magus after Crono's resurrection, two of which had involved fruit baskets. "Something like that," she replied.

A drop of water fell and burst against her hand, as cold as if it had just melted.


	12. Chapter 12

"So, Flea," said Nadia as the group came to the flatlands at the base of the Denadoro range. "Are we talking about someone really small and itchy, or what?"

Lucca cast a quick glance skyward before shaking her head. "Let's just say he's good with magic and would look better than me in a bikini."

"Oh? Um." After a moment of apparent cognitive dissonance, Nadia asked, "Would he look better than _me_ in a bikini?"

"I'm not sure I should answer that."

Frog coughed politely. At least, that was what Lucca assumed he was doing; the noise sounded more like a croak trying to echo in the wrong sort of throat. "Pray speak ye less merry of the devil," he said, coming up to walk beside her. "The fiend hath stricken entire regiments with madness before mine eyes. To hear such laughter as brother slayeth brother..."

_And those are the memories you keep._ Lucca sighed. "Yeah, I know. But—" Whatever words had intended to follow slid back down her tongue as she caught sight of a white flicker in the eastern sky.

"What's wrong?" asked Nadia, and Lucca realized that she had halted mid-stride. "Is something—"

"Probably just a cloud." Turning away from the speck, Lucca resumed walking at a greater clip. "But I'm not going to hang around and stare at it."

The spooked mood hung over them the rest of the way to Sandorino, causing Nadia periodically to squint over her shoulder and make small noises of false alarm. Frog remained silent, which proved a much more debilitating distraction. Every line of thought that Lucca tried to trace threaded itself through the hole left by her Red Gate.

The only bright spot—and there had to be a bright spot, since Nadia was with her—was that history was unlikely to suffer another immediate crash. Even if Magus understood the function of the Gate Key, the access code and rows of cleverly unlabeled buttons would stymie him, at least for a while. As far as Lucca could recall, Magus had never had any particular problems adapting to technology, but he considered it inferior to the dark arts and had never left any doubts as to his opinion. That he hadn't seen anything more advanced than a drawbridge lately would make his grasp on electronics shaky at best.

Logically, the accidental destruction of the Gate Key ranked as a more pressing concern than its misuse, but Lucca found it hard to take much solace in that.

When they reached the village's outskirts, where old farmhouses and world-weary cows were the only signs of impending civilization, Lucca signaled a halt. "Try not to look dangerous," she said, removing her helmet and stuffing it into her knapsack. Nadia's not-quite-suppressed smile suggested an advanced case of hat-hair. "With the war starting, everyone's going to be jumpy around strangers. That means no weapons out. Right, Frog?"

Frog seemed suddenly aware that he had been winding his hair around his fingers. "Aye," he said, letting his hand fall to his side. "Today's bitter loss is yet unknown to these, but 'twould be ill-advised to give them cause for suspicion."

Nadia nodded and held out her crossbow and quiver. "Hey, can one of you guys hang on to these for me? I, uh, can't really put them anywhere." The hand holding the quiver waved helplessly at her outfit, then quickly righted itself as several quarrels began the slide to freedom. A nearby cow mooed unconcernedly.

As Frog tucked the weapons away with the Masamune, Lucca untied her scarf and presented it to Nadia. "Hide your hair with it," she said. "You and Leene are about the same age now, and you don't really have any major distinguishing marks."

Nadia twisted her ponytail up into a bun. "Except for the mole."

"True, but the mole is not in a publicly accessible place." Out of the corner of her eye, Lucca watched Frog's cheeks bloom crimson.

Once the scarf was in place, Lucca gave a critical look to her party, one-third of which was still blushing, and wondered if they wouldn't do better passing themselves off as traveling performers. A quick flashback to her and Nadia's impromptu duet of "The Cursed Fiddler of Porre" disabused her of the notion. "All right," she said. "If anyone asks, we just got off the boat from Choras."

Nadia brightened. "Ooh, I used to listen to this radio show—"

"This is going nowhere good," Lucca pointed out.

"—about these pirates from Choras, and I think it was supposed to be in the middle ages, maybe, but what matters is I can do the accent!" She took a deep breath and began a brutal assault on her vowels: "Ahooo-oy, I am from Choras! How are you, yarr?"

Several gobsmacked moments later, Lucca's hand found its way to her forehead and refused to come down.

"Choras is the land of my birth and nurture," said Frog at last, "and by my troth, thou hast the wrong of it."

"But the pirates said—"

"Ne'er," continued Frog, with special emphasis, "hath son nor daughter of Choras given voice to 'ahoy' without the confines of a ship, nor 'yarr' on land nor sea."

Nadia regarded him thoughtfully. "So does everybody sound like you? I mean, does everybodyeth—"

"No. Absolutely no." A cold breeze left Lucca acutely aware of her exposed head and throat and killed any amusement the conversation offered. With what she hoped was a surreptitious glance at the sky, she started again toward the town and said, "Just so we're clear, I'm doing all the talking."

 

Sandorino, apparently, wouldn't change much in the next decade. Lucca's visit to 601 AD was still fresh enough in her mind to make her aware that some of the buildings were due to shift in color or shape, but the town itself had remained and probably would remain constant—at least outside of the bubble in Lucca's memory in which it collapsed into ash and blackened glass, or the even more fragile bubble in which it was devoured by the earth. The same streets were still neglected, allowing her to attract a minimal number of stares on her way to the inn.

Which had changed. Was going to change. Lucca was in no mood for the grammar of time travel.

Apparently the inn wasn't the R&amp;R Hotel yet; the name must have come with later, less seedy management. "The Queen's Head" also seemed to be represent a recent change in nomenclature, as Lucca could still make out the ghosts of letters underneath the new paint. Other faded areas suggested that the silhouette purporting to be a bust of the queen had once been significantly bustier.

As they watched, a cloud of foul smells that might have contained a person seeped out through the door and drifted down an alley. An incoherent argument was audible until the door swung stickily shut.

"My father would have a _fit_," said Nadia, with something uncomfortably close to excitement.

Frog nodded. "Aye, 'tis a place most unfit for virtuous maidens such as thee. Let us—"

"Find something a little more upscale?" Lucca laughed. "Anywhere that screens out the weirdos is going to screen out _us_."

Pressing his lips into a line (awkwardly, as if he had expected them to fit together differently), Frog glanced from his companions to the wooden sign and back again. He sighed. "Then pray remain near me. I have no doubts of thy prowess in battle, but 'twill go poorly with thee if thou art compelled to display it here."

Lucca refrained from pointing out that Frog's current form was unlikely to prevail in a physical confrontation with anyone much bigger than Nadia. When her brain began a fruitless query of how muscular Crono had been, she distracted herself by saying, "Right, so let's just make sure we don't draw attention to ourselves."

"Um, you mean like by standing right outside the door and whispering a lot?" asked Nadia.

"Exactly." Lucca took a deep breath, adjusted her glasses, and pushed open the door.

While the Queen's Head predated cigarettes, the smoke from the poorly ventilated fireplace lent the common room the same thick, dim atmosphere as a pub in modern Porre. Clumps of patrons, most of them cloaked, hunched over the tables, while a few loners populated the barstools. A flash of movement and a thunk drew Lucca's attention to a cork dartboard and its attendant players. As she stepped inside, the patrons seated nearest the door gave her a look of discourteous disinterest and went back to their card game.

A hand caught her arm gently, and Frog's disapproving face appeared in her peripheral vision. "With me," he whispered, "and guard well thy pockets. Such men are sleight of hand and slighter of conscience."

Nodding, Lucca set her hand on the flap of her knapsack and headed for the bartender, who seemed a more likely authority figure than the enormous scowling man stirring an equally enormous pot of what smelled like stew. The young woman who would one day run the R&amp;R Hotel was nowhere in sight. After glancing back at Nadia, who had attracted quite a bit of discourteous interest and looked as if she would have appreciated a squirt-bottle of bleach with which to repel it, Lucca decided that the Queen's Head must have been purged with fire before any attractive female owner had set foot in it. _Just not enough fire, not after I charged in._

Clearing her throat and her thoughts, Lucca rapped on the counter and said, "We'd like a room."

The bartender finished redistributing the filth inside a mug before gracing her with his attention. "One bed per room. And I'm running a respectable establishment here." In response to a snort from a nearby drinker, he added, "Despite appearances."

A fly landed on the bar. Without missing a beat, the bartender twisted his rag into a whip, splattered the insect, and went back to cleaning glasses.

Lucca crossed her arms. "I wasn't finished. We want a room, and he wants one next door to us."

"He's our uncle," said Nadia helpfully. She began to append a "yarr" before Lucca kicked her.

The bartender glanced at them and shrugged. "Thirty gold. Meals included, drinks not." He accepted Lucca's coins, slid her a pair of keys from the dark recess beneath the bar, and turned back to his other customers.

Once they had navigated to the private, less hazy darkness of the hallway outside their rooms (totally unfamiliar, either because memory had failed or the inn had indeed been destroyed and rebuilt), Lucca said, "There, that wasn't so hard."

"No, just icky." Nadia made a face and shuddered. "It's like they slimed me with their _eyeballs_."

"Darker days were these," said Frog, with a contemptuous glance back at the door to common room. "An had I not been dazzled by glory, ne'er would I have mourned them." He sighed and shook his head. "Mayhap vice birtheth monsters, and we did beckon the spilling of our blood."

There was an argument to be had about the appropriateness of using seedy pubs as social barometers, but Lucca didn't feel up to making it. Instead she rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, try downtown Porre back in my era. I think someone would have noticed all the monsters by now."

He shook his head again. "Mine apologies. I do forget myself in my weariness."

_Not yet, I hope._ Lucca wondered if his archaicisms would fade with his memories and whether he would still affect them for his friends' sake, crafting his sentences during pauses in conversation to ensure that he never missed a "thou." Given Frog's dedication, his quirks of speech were likely to prove as unreliable a barometer of his mental state as the patrons of Queen's Head were of social mores.

Silence draped itself over them all like a too-large coat.

"Yeah, I guess we're all pretty tired," said Nadia, shrugging it off. "So has toothpaste been invented yet?" At Lucca's look, she explained, "I just thought we might all feel better if our teeth weren't fuzzy."

Movements in Frog's lips and cheeks caught Lucca's eye, and she was certain that he was running his tongue over his teeth, reaffirming their existence.

"Judging by what was going on in the bartender's mouth, I'd have to say 'no.'" Lucca turned to Frog and said, "You've got your notebook, right? Don't try to access any new memories until you've written everything down. We'll look for Glenn tomorrow unless you remember he's about to die or something." Nadia's expression suggested that this had been insensitive. "But I'm sure he's fine. You're fine."

Frog gave her a crooked half-smile. "'Tis charitable of thee to use such a word. If aught aileth thee in the night, I am e'er at thy beck."

"And so are we," said Nadia. She gave him an encouraging look, and Frog nodded to her before he let himself into his room, leaving the door cracked open behind him.

"If it makes you feel any better," said Lucca as she unlocked the neighboring room, "I'm pretty sure this place is going to burn down in the next decade."

Nadia followed her inside. "You know what would make me feel better? _Soap_." As she flopped down on the bed, she frowned, poked the mattress, and added, "Also, something not hay."

In ten years, the R&amp;R Hotel would have down pillows, reasonably clean sheets, and a small desk in the corner of each room. The Queen's Head seemed secure in the knowledge that its clientele would do just as well with straw, a stool, and approximately half the square footage. Although extra light was unlikely to improve the room's appearance, Lucca made her way to the nightstand, settled on the wobbly stool beside it, and sent a wisp of flame rolling down her finger to light the candle. "Well," she said, swirling a bit of leftover fire over her thumb, "I could go head and burn the place down now."

With a quick glance to make sure Lucca was joking, Nadia replied, "Nah, it still beats sleeping outside." Her expression grew thoughtful. "Where do you think Glenn is sleeping tonight?"

Lucca snuffed the excess flame in her hand. "If he's smart, not smack in the middle of Denadoro."

"I just hope he's okay." Nadia picked at a strand of straw that poked through the mattress. "I keep thinking we should have stayed to look—"

"Don't. If we ran into Flea, he'd kill us." Lucca's battle against the meretricious magician had dimmed in her memory, but the feeling of wind magic slicing at her body and the realization that she was fighting against a force powerful enough to rip through the Guardian army remained with her. According to her notes, Crono had been struck by some mind-twisting spell and come roaring at her with his sword.

By all accounts, Flea had been crushed as easily as his namesake during his next fight with the party. Lucca hadn't been present for it; having gotten thoroughly sick of Magus, she had stayed behind and tinkered while Crono and Marle, being too nice for their own good, accompanied the warlock on his personal henchmen-removal business. Of course, that fight had taken place after Flea had been badly injured and in hiding, while his opponents had spent their time collecting exciting new weapons and mastering elemental magic that maimed the laws of physics.

Reaching into her bag for her notebook, Lucca went on, "If Frog were still, you know, _Frog_, or if Spekkio suddenly showed up and gave you magic, we'd have a chance, but—"

"Well, how hard can it be?" Nadia sat up cross-legged on the bed and held her hands out in front of her, wiggling her fingers."C'mon, ice! Abraca-freeze! Coooold!"

"It's not quite that simple," Lucca flipped to the page about her trip to the End of Time and said, "See, it's right in here. Humans lost their magic after Zeal fell, so Spekkio had to give it to us."

"But I can try, right?" Nadia screwed up her face and pointed both forefingers at the candle. "Alakaz-ice!"

"Just try quietly," said Lucca. "I've got thinking to do."

As Nadia waved her hands like an amateur interpretive dancer, Lucca tapped her pen against the paper and tried to generate a plan that would protect Glenn, keep Frog from falling any farther apart, and retrieve the Gate Key from the stronghold of the most powerful warlock in recorded history. She and Nadia were experiencing identical success rates.

Any plan that required entering Magus's Castle, a step that seemed inevitable, could not include Frog. He was too physically weak to storm the gates, too awkward in his new skin to be stealthy, and, depending on what had become of Glenn in this new timeline, potentially too unstable to resist a suicidal attempt at revenge. On the other hand, Frog would never allow Lucca to enter the lions' den alone. Nor would Nadia, for that matter. _Hell, _I _wouldn't let myself do it. We just don't have anyone else._

They didn't have any other options, either. Even if Lucca could find substitute materials to construct a new Gate Key, there remained the possibility that she would be using it to traverse a timestream springing an untenable number of leaks. Her brain fixated on the image of thousands of tiny, Magus-shaped worms boring through Melchior's kitchen table.

 

_We find Glenn first. At least we can keep that problem from getting any worse._

 

Out of the corner of her eye, Lucca watched Nadia challenge the pillow to a staring contest, her mouth silently forming the word "ice." Lucca looked down at her current page, which had been pockmarked by her increasingly frustrated pen-tapping, then pinched the bridge of her nose and said, "I can't concentrate in here."

Nadia dropped the pillow and looked over apologetically. "Am I being too loud? I could—"

"It's not that." Lucca snapped her notebook shut with a little more force than she had intended. "I just need to clear my head."

"Um, are you sure that's a good idea? I could go with—"

"You look just like the queen, remember?" Lucca said, throwing her knapsack over her shoulder. "Someone's going to notice if you hang around in public."

"No one out there noticed anything."

"They weren't exactly looking at your face, either. And I need you to be here for Frog."

Nadia's worried frown was almost audible. "You're not going to do anything silly, are you?"

"Lucca the Great? Silly?" Lucca turned and stuck out her tongue. "Never."

That provoked a bit of a smile from Nadia, at least, and Lucca was out and closing the door behind her before anything else could be said.

 

 

_Why settle for "silly" when you can cut straight to "stupid"?_

 

Aiming for an aura of uninviting but harmless eccentricity, Lucca clutched her bag close for safe-keeping and made her way to an empty stool at the far end of the bar. She still felt naked without her helmet, but its presence would have attracted the worst sort of attention. Guardia's partriotic fever was already high enough to cook brains and burn away anything with the stink of sorcery.

She could have burned the entire inn down before anyone had a chance to escape. It bothered her less that she was dwelling on the idea than that she was dwelling on it so earnestly.

In an act of perfunctory self-deception, Lucca set her notebook on the counter and opened it to a blank page before signaling for a drink. The bartender obliged with the nonchalance of a man who believed that anyone tall enough to sit on a barstool was old enough to provide him with business.

Lucca sniffed the probably-ale, regretted it, and took a tentative sip. The drink's only similarity to poi was an abundance of bugs.

"Bleh," she muttered, banishing the mug from her immediate reach. After digging a pen from her knapsack, Lucca stared at the blank page in front of her, tapped a cross rhythm against the counter top, drew a crooked cube in the left margin, scratched it out, wrote "WHO CONTROLS TIME?" in the center, surrounded the words with stars, scratched the entire mess out so furiously she left indentations three pages down, sighed, tucked the pen behind her ear, and grabbed the mug again with both hands.

Stupid, self-destructive behavior, she decided after another unpleasant gulp, was meant to be enjoyable. Debauchery had gone straight downhill in the last sixty-five million years.

Lucca's second mug was markedly more tolerable, and by the end of her third she had scrawled, "Queen's Head inn four stars excellent service would recommend" in the lower margin of her paper. No one had attempted to bother her yet, and the bartender kept track of her consumption only out of financial interest.

Her alcoholic haze could therefore be blamed for her failure to shoo away the dissolute-looking man who sidled up to her left and said, "What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"Performing a mercy-killing on a few lucky brain cells." Clearly Lucca wasn't drunk if she could still manage all those syllables. She gave him a smug look until she had to stifle a belch.

"Not much of a drinker, are you?" he said, giving her a wry smile as he settled himself on the stool beside hers. "Tell you what, kid—you pick up my tab, and I'll make sure you stay out of trouble. Lots of unsavory sorts in a place like this."

Lucca snorted. "Present company includuded." After a pause to sound the word out again in her head, she said, "Included. Dammit. Getcher own money." The niggling doubt that she had overestimated her powers of articulation was brushed aside as she squinted at her unwanted companion, whose face roused a few bats in the belfry of her memory.

"You look familiar," she said before he could protest her assessment of him. "Were you—are you—will you still be alive in ten years?" Lucca frowned at her ale. "Forget I said that."

Scooting closer to her in what Lucca assumed was to ploy to suggest "joint tab" to the bartender, the man grinned and said, "Toma Levine, fearless explorer and legitmate adventurer." Lucca did not take his proffered hand. "Perhaps you've heard of my daring exploits, eh?"

Eyebrows furrowed, Lucca consulted her notes. When she noticed the man peering with interest at her handwriting, she snatched the notebook off the table and held it somewhat unsteadily in front of her face as she skimmed the pages. Robots and reptites blurred together as she fumbled through the fractal maze of her personal history.

_Ah. The flakey guy with the Rainbow Shell._ Lucca's cursory written description indicated that Toma was destined to lose an eye some time in the next decade and develop a rather more robust mustache, but his personality seemed to have already reached maturity.

"Yes, thank you, it's on my friend here." Toma accepted a drink from the bartender, who moved on to another patron before Lucca could put together a coherent argument, then turned back to her and asked, "So what kind of problems are you drinking away?"

Lucca snorted and swatted ineffectually in his direction.

"And just how many drinks have you had now?"

Studying her fingers, Lucca said, "Thr—four. This's four." When she caught his expression, she scowled and added, "They're big."

"Of course they are," Toma replied in a tone that was probably meant to placate. "Look, I come through here a lot, and you're really not the type this place usually attracts, you know what I'm saying? I figure you're up to something."

The gentle fuzz settling over Lucca's vision made it hard to stay angry. "Yeah, I'm saving the world."

Before Toma could reply, the absurdity of her statement sank in, and she nearly fell off her barstool laughing. Several nearby drinkers glared at her.

"Right," said Toma, propping her back up. "I think you've had—"

Lucca brushed him off and took a clumsy swig of her ale. "I'm not drunk," she said reasonably. "When I'm drunk, I... dance. With cavemen. Funny whatcha remember." She frowned and reached up to pat her cheek. "My face is numb."

Toma let out a long breath, as if she were making his evening much more difficult than it had to be. "Look," he said, as Lucca's interest began to drift to a knothole in the counter, "what I'm saying is I'm between jobs now, right, and you look like you could use the reasonably priced services of an adventurer like myself—"

"Hang on." Lucca opened her notebook again, frowned, turned it the right way up, flipped back and forth between the same pages four times before realizing her lack of progress, gave up, and finally regarded Toma as critically as she could a subject that would not quite snap into focus. A brief consultation with her memory felt like an attempt to teach gophers how to use a card catalogue. "I'm having an idea," she said at last, because she couldn't seem to think unless she did so out loud. "I dunno if it's a good idea yet."

"Payment in advance is always a good idea."

Ignoring him, Lucca listed to her feet and said, "The thing, see, the thing is, the thing..." She disengaged the clause. "We're not enough. And we're always _losing_." She punctuated the final word with a sweeping gesture that would have cost a drinker his ale if Toma had not caught her arm.

"Careful," he said, and she laughed again. _It's too late for careful._

Walking proved more difficult than standing, as Lucca's legs expressed an increasing dissatisfaction with remaining perpendicular to the ground. "You should meet my friends," she said, staggering away from the bar at compromise angles, "before I lose them, too."

 

_Spin away, Crono, and your eyes are redbluegreen—_

 

A stray chair caught Lucca in the shin and sketched some of the edges back into her haze. Grimacing, she limped toward the residential hallway.

"What the hell," she heard Toma mutter behind her. "I've seen weirder."

"I'll bet you—ohgod." Lucca barely managed to collapse against the sill of the hall window before her last few bad decisions rushed up her esophagus and redecorated an unlucky shrub. The shudder that went through her body shook some of the fog from her head. As she dug through her bag in search of something with which to wipe her mouth, Lucca made a mental note to invent toothpaste.

Her fingers wrapped around a handkerchief and several coins, the former of which went to her lips and the latter of which she pressed clumsily into Toma's hand, saying, "Here, you're hired. Don't run off anywhere." _You're flakey, not a cheat. Unless I broke that, too._

Without waiting for a reply from Toma, she stumbled to the door to her room, found that Nadia hadn't locked it, and pushed it open far enough to glimpse the princess sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up, playing with Lucca's scarf.

"Oh, good," said Nadia, looking up, "you're finally—"

"Sweet holy hell." Toma's voice startled Lucca and sent her sprawling forward until she caught the doorjamb. "You kidnapped the goddamn queen!"

Nadia leapt up with a start, her ponytail whipping dangerously close to the candle. Her gaze darted between the figures in the doorway as she yanked the scarf back over her hair and violated pronunciation: "Ahoy-ahoy, what is this 'queen'? We do not have them in Choras, I am sure. Yarr."

The slight undulation of the floor Lucca attributed to hundreds of pirates rolling over in their graves.

"Oh, I get it," said Toma, the picture of fascinated perspicacity. "You're gonna kidnap the queen and replace her with this fake—what are you, some kind of naga-ette?"

Indignation undermined Nadia's dialectal efforts. "'Naga-ette'?"

Undeterred, Toma went on, "And now it's up to me to either do the heroic thing or sell out to the Mystic spies—"

"'Mystic spies'?" Nadia snatched the scarf off her head and crumpled it in her fist. "Lucca, who _is_ this?"

"Shh," said Lucca, in deference to the small, sober part of herself that remembered how to worry about fights and riots and blown covers. "We're not kidnapping anybody. We're saving the world." A noise like a laugh tried to escape but fell to pieces in her throat. "He's Toma. I hired him. He's just the same as he wa—will be, only now he has two eyes." Something else occurred to her. "Doesn't he?"

The floor rolled up at Lucca like a wave, but Nadia caught her and said, "Oh, my God, you're drunk."

"Am not. Maybe. A little bit."

Nadia bit her lip, then dragged Lucca the last few feet to the bed and pushed her up onto the mattress. Balance pulled Lucca down on her side, rotating her view of the world by ninety degrees. _Perspective, everything in perspective. World spins but you can't feel it._ At the moment she felt a lot of spinning that didn't seem to be echoed by any visible movement.

"Okay," said Nadia, turning back to Toma. "Lucca's kind of crazy right now, 'cause for a super-genius she can be really dumb sometimes, but I'm not the queen and I'm _really_ not—"

Further refinements were cut off by a startled noise from Toma. Twisting her head, Lucca caught sight of Frog looming in the doorway like a vengeful spirit, his broadsword gleaming in the candlelight. The haggard face and not-quite-human posture that had given him a pitiable appearance by day now gave him a desperate, predatory look.

From Lucca's angle, the doorway became a hole in the world out of which Frog had crawled, and she envisioned the entire planet in all its eras, from birth to dusty death, sucked piecemeal through it, while she stood on the edge trying to fish out the bits she wanted. _Like a stage magician, building Crono out of rabbits._ Crono might not have liked rabbits.

"'Twas a fearful din that roused me," Frog said, and the doorway was a doorway again. "Doth this knave molest thee?"

Toma raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Hey, I was just looking for work, here, but since you're all nutcases—"

"No one is molestering anybody," Lucca cut in. Something sounded off about one of those words, but she couldn't be bothered to investigate it. "I am having an idea."

"See? I'm an innocent party here." Toma's words failed to remove the blade from the space just under his chin.

Frog's face softened with worry as he shifted his gaze to the bed. "Lucca, art thou well?"

"No." The word washed honest and clean. Using the moment of clarity to prop herself back up and set the world back on its axis, Lucca added, "He's harmless. I hired him."

"Yeah," said Toma, glaring down the length of the blade, "funny definition of 'hired' you people have."

Frog glanced between him and Lucca, then lowered his sword. Toma made a huffy noise and a show of brushing imaginary dust from his shirt.

"Well," said Nadia with cheerfulness that must have been forced, "it looks like we've had a big misunderstanding, and everyone must be pretty tired, so maybe we should talk about it tomorrow when we're all not so grumpy."

Although Frog's face suggested that he would have rather resolved matters before anyone left the room, he only nodded and stepped aside to unblock the doorway. Toma took a final look around the room, shrugged, muttered something about a stranger time had in Porre, and wished them all a flippant good-night as he strolled out into the hall and back toward the bar.

"Until the morrow, then," said Frog, and his courteous failure to demand a reckoning cut Lucca deeper than the most pointed question would have. As he sheathed his sword, he added in a soft, distant voice, "I find no crisis to compel our hand this night, yet I confess that I am made to search in darkness and briars."

_I'm sorry._ Lucca tried to give voice to the words, but she found it easier to turn her face away and stare at the candleflame.

The bed shifted as Nadia sat down on it and said, "Everything'll look better tomorrow, right?"

"Mayhap."

Once the door had clicked shut, Nadia's face appeared in front of Lucca's with jutted chin and narrowed eyes. "You are in so. Much. Trouble."

"I know." Lucca flopped backward on the mattress and watched the air swirl between herself and the ceiling, exhaustion creeping up over her limbs and temples. As she let her eyelids fall, she said, "I think I'm done screwing up now."

There was an unappeased pause. "What on earth were you—"

"Shh," said Lucca. In the darkness she felt herself dancing away from the outside world in ever-widening spirals, and tendrils of dream had already begun to entangle her thoughts. "I'm saving the world."


	13. Chapter 13

Lucca awoke with a heavy head, a parched throat, and a tongue that felt as if it had spent the night in a laundry hamper. When she made an probative noise and pried open an eye, the universe became a bewildering mass of pink, gold, and green.

"Good morning!" Nadia chirped, her nose less than an inch from Lucca's. "It's time to deal with it!"

"Mwmph," said Lucca. Sheer exhaustion prevented her from flailing. As she tried to work out what she was meant to be dealing with, Nadia pulled her into an unsteady sitting position. The room came into crooked focus as Lucca's glasses were shoved onto her face.

Blinking, Lucca adjusted her frames and became aware of the excited chittering of the gophers of memory, which had never quite figured out the card catalogue but had managed to cut and paste the previous night's events into a colorful collage. She pressed her hand against her forehead. "I did something really stupid, didn't I?"

"Uh-huh." Nadia's voice was still brittle-bright.

"I—I hired Toma."

"You sure did."

"I gave Toma our money."

"Yep."

Lucca's other hand joined the first in supporting her head. "I had an idea," she began, then turned to massaging her temples in hopes of remembering the finer details.

Nadia huffed. "Oh, don't stop now. You haven't gotten to the part where you got really drunk in a room full of gross perverts and made me _worry_ about you—"

"I'm sorry," Lucca said, and meant it. She reached for her scarf to clean her glasses, remembered she had lent it to Nadia, and settled for using her tunic. The motion soothed her and gave her a moment to wrack her aching brain for excuses that didn't make her sound pathetic.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a tackle-hug that smacked her shoulders into the headboard and set off an explosive headache. "I really was worried," said Nadia. Her words registered only weakly, after running the gauntlet of lead clubs inside Lucca's skull. "Don't you dare ever do anything stupid like that again."

Inside Lucca's brain, a cynical thought about her inability to make that promise met a grisly end between her throbbing frontal lobes. Instead she replied, "Yeah, I screwed up. Weight of the world, you know?" Lucca tried to smile but ended up biting her lip. "It's a lot to carry."

"Then let me _help_ you." Nadia sat back on her heels, her eyes intense, and continued, "I mean, why do you think I'm here? You're not the only one who wants to save the world! And I'm not a great fighter or a super-genius or anything, but I can still _do_ something."

_And "doing something" has worked out so well for us so far._ Sarcasm seemed unlikely to result in drawn curtains and rehydration, so Lucca went with, "If I agree with you, do I get some water? My head's killing me."

Nadia demonstrated the Guardian royal family's mastery of the set jaw. "Well, that's what you get for drinking all that. Seriously, Lucca, this is the second time I've seen you get all wacky. Are we going to have to have an intervention?"

"Only if I can fit 'Hello, my name is Super Genius Lucca, Not a Mad Scientist, No, Really, Mwa Ha Ha' on my nametag."

Nadia smacked her with a pillow, which Lucca felt counted as an act of greater aggression when hay and hangovers were involved. "Here," she said, picking up a wooden cup from the nearby stool and handing it to Lucca. "Frog went out to the well and got us a bucket, 'cause the water here is really scary."

At least the ale had come by its bugs honestly. Trying to forget four centuries of medical discoveries, Lucca downed the contents of the cup. She'd drunk worse, she knew, but the gustatory memories had left her.

Without making eye contact, Lucca tapped her fingers against the cup and said, "Frog's doing that 'I'm not angry, just disappointed' thing, isn't he?"

"Actually, I think he's just depressed."

She winced. "He's still using Frog-speak, right?"

"Yeah, but he's pausing a lot, like he has to think about it." Nadia shifted to sit cross-legged. "I think he doesn't like whatever new memories he's picking up."

_So which is worse: Losing yourself all at once, or piece by piece?_ In a dusty alcove of Lucca's memory, Nadia's voice echoed from Marle's mouth in the shape of the word "cold."

"Anyway," said Nadia, snapping her fingers for attention, "didn't you say you had a plan?"

"An idea." Plans didn't come drenched in alcohol and sticky with speculation. "It's not a good idea, but it's the best I've got."

"Well, that's something. You scare me when you don't have ideas." After a pause, Nadia added, "I mean, even more than when you _do_ have ideas."

"Har, har." Lucca handed her empty cup back to Nadia and tried sitting up straighter. When her head failed to explode, she shifted her legs over the edge of the bed and watched them dangle, waiting for her blood and body weight to redistribute themselves. Her limbs and head felt like sacks of wet cement.

Nadia's hands closed around her wrists and tugged, whereupon the cement sloshed into Lucca's feet. For a sour moment Lucca wondered how she had managed to nurse a poi-induced hangover through a jungle maze, but that memory frayed into red strands.

"We need to find Glenn first," she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. She felt too light and exposed without her helmet, and something irrational in the back of her mind suggested that its presence would ease her headache. Pushing the thought aside, Lucca added, "Toma didn't take off, did he?"

"No, but I think he's already on his third breakfast beer."

Lucca didn't recall giving Toma all of her remaining coins, but she hadn't been in a position to bother counting them out, either. Fleeing an unaffordable tab would be exactly the sort of culminating experience she had come to expect from Sandorino. As she picked her way slowly toward her bag to assess her financial situation, she said, "Just as long as he can walk in a straight line when I need him. He's kind of integral to my idea." She stopped to sigh. "It's really not a good idea."

"Um." Nadia tugged at the scarf in her hands. "Can you think of another one?"

"There's no _time_." That wasn't quite right—there was too much time, twisting and overlapping where it should have been smooth and flat—but Lucca didn't bother to correct herself, on the grounds that there wasn't enough time where she needed time to be. Her fingers brushed enough metal on the bottom of her knapsack to reassure her that at least she wouldn't have to try fleeing with a hangover.

When Lucca looked up, she found herself presented with a mostly clean rag. "I rubbed my teeth with the other end," Nadia explained. "It sort of helped."

_Emphasis on the "sort of."_ Lucca was still polishing her molars with her tongue as she and Nadia approached the entrance to Frog's room. He had left the door ajar and stood waiting just behind it, notebook in hand and makeshift sack slung over his shoulder. The pale skin beneath his eyes had darkened to a bruised shade of exhaustion.

"Good morning again," said Nadia with almost convincing cheer.

Frog nodded slowly, as if too quick a motion might have dislodged his head. "Art thou well now, Lucca?"

_No, and neither are you_. Aloud she replied, "I'm standing. Let's just get back to Denadoro before something else goes wrong." She began to turn, then reconsidered. "You—Glenn's still there, right?"

As Frog's eyes twitched and drifted out of focus, Lucca wondered if hers looked the same when she tried to untangle her own timelines. Perhaps she at last had a reason to be grateful for her thick lenses.

He nodded again, even more hesitantly. "He hath not yet departed, so far as I may see, yet 'tis difficult to discern with certainty. To regard mine own memories as alien—"

"Don't. You'll lose them if you do." Lucca hadn't meant to snap. She attempted a softer tone as she asked, "Do you want me to hold on to that notebook for you or—" his fingers tightened around the spiral binding— "on second thought, you'd better keep it."

Nadia glanced back and forth between them and smiled, but the cheekiness appeared forced. "Guess I'm the only one without a crazy parallel universe diary now, huh? You guys are gonna make me jealous."

Lucca was already jealous of herself for having grown up with a friend who kept her grounded, whose hand kept her from stopping short or going too far. It was hard not to regard as alien the memories that felt most like invaders.

_Okay, that's enough standing around in the hallway going crazy._ She took a deep breath, straightened up, and headed out into the now sparsely populated public portion of the inn, tossing a reminder over her shoulder to Nadia to tie the scarf back in place. Little details made all the difference.

Toma was back at the bar, enjoying a breakfast beer and a plate of something that wobbled along the boundary between eggs and porridge.

"We'll be back later today," she told him, giving him a disapproving look as he signaled for another drink. "I want you to find us a boat."

"A boat, eh?" His grin was mocking, but the spark of interest of his eyes was unmistakable; apparently she'd hit his legitimate adventuring nerve. He twirled his spoon between his fingers. "Hey, fine by me, long as you're still paying. Up for a little hair of the dog before you go?"

It was, Lucca realized, very difficult to assume the moral high ground with someone who had watched her vomit out a window the night before, so she tried a lower route as she went to settle up the last twelve hours of damage with the bartender: "Just make sure you can still walk in a straight line."

 

No Mystics attacked them on the way back to Denadoro, though Lucca half-wished one or two had; Frog couldn't have been tenser if he were rolled into a wire and coiled into a spring, and that he now moved more easily in his human shape seemed only to put him more ill at ease. Nadia kept her crossbow loaded and her gaze fixed on the sky, until Lucca snapped at her after the third time she tripped.

Even putting her helmet back on hadn't proven the psychological panacea that Lucca hoped.

Four hundred years later, she was scribbling diagrams in the margins of a history book and ignoring a lecture on the loss of morale following Sir Cyrus's disappearance. In another decade, in a different life, she was laying his ghost to rest and trying not to feel awkward in the presence of Frog's grief and even more awkward in the presence of an afterlife. Was he damned to haunt the mountains now, moaning in the water and the wind, as he once echoed his doom through centuries of crumbling stone?

Even afterlives were subject to the space-time continuum. What did it mean to rest or unravel after death if three stupid kids with a time machine could reroute eternity?

Nadia's hand caught her shoulder. "We're here. So who else feels like we just left?"

_Frog probably feels like he never left at all_, Lucca kept herself from pointing out. In the jumble of broken pieces in the back of her mind, there remained a few sharp shards of watching herself from the outside. The world was uncomfortably different on the other side of the eyes, with the filters of memory stripped away. And Frog wasn't even the same person.

Wind agitated the leaves and grass all the way up the mountain, far past the angle at which Lucca was willing to bend her neck. Even at the outskirts, the noise of the falls drowned any but the most thundering footsteps. The Denadoro range was alive, breathing and pulsing, offering easy cover to Mystics and lost squires alike.

Lucca took a step back from it, trying not to see the white flicker of Flea's skirt in the glare of the sun on the water. "So where do we start?"

"I..." The same breeze that stirred the foliage drew Frog's hair back from his face, exposing him briefly as hollow-cheeked and pallid, with skin like a weathered palimpsest. He rubbed at his forehead with one hand and curled the other tighter around the sack containing the Masamune. "I return now to grieve. With the advent of dawn I could no longer bear to hide."

He paused too often, and guilt filled too many of the gaps. "Hiding was smart," said Lucca, using her gun to gesture at the places along the path where smaller trees had been uprooted and haphazardly strewn, their limbs stripped of leaves.

"Yeah, or that flea would have found you." Nadia sounded less upbeat as she took in the destruction and added, "Wait, is _he_ the one who—"

"There's a reason we didn't hang around yesterday."

Frog said nothing; Lucca suspected he just didn't have the energy to focus on grammar and competing memories and walking all at once. Sword drawn, he led the climb.

From the look of it, Flea had hunted in fits and tantrums, uprooting concentrated clusters of foliage before flitting to the next point of interest. If he had left underlings to continue the search, they were either well-hidden or already departed; every movement that drew a shot from Lucca or Nadia turned out to be a false alarm, a caprice of wind or water.

Frog lunged at nothing and reacted only in the aftermath.

"He's not okay, is he?" Nadia whispered as they neared the scene of yesterday's ruin.

"No." The word came out louder and harsher than Lucca intended, and it still didn't distract from the question of what she would do if she confronted her younger self. _Shoot myself in the head,_ she thought, with more bitterness than practicality. Delusions of sacrifice were a waste of dreams; without her, the Millennial Fair would have passed without incident and the world would have gone on turning toward ruin, just as it had without Crono and just as it would without Marle. Kick away any leg of the tripod, and the critical moment collapsed.

Nadia winced. By the time it occurred to Lucca that an apology might be in order, she realized that the reaction hadn't been to her tone; they had nearly reached the end of the path, and mixed into the thundering of the falls were keening sobs. She darted ahead to block the rope ladder.

But Frog wasn't rushing forward. He hunched in place, hand curled tight against his chest, and all the wildness of the wind couldn't disguise his trembling. His words tripped out: "I still—'tis still—I bleed afresh. Cyrus..."

The word overlapped with a wail from above.

"Don't just stand there! What if he's hurt?" Without waiting for arguments, Nadia shouldered her crossbow and bumped Lucca aside to shoot up the ladder. When she vanished over the lip of the ledge, the cries came to an abrupt end.

Lucca sighed, then turned to Frog to ask, "You're not violent or anything, are you?"

"Nay." His face scrunched sharply, as if he had been struck in the forehead, and his eyes were dark and fogged when he opened them again. He drifted forward as if underwater.

Halting him proved almost distressingly easy. Lucca thumped her palm against the worn leather on his chest, firmly told him "no," then turned and hurried after Nadia.

"Listen, I'm really not Leene." Near a large cluster of stones, Nadia crouched beside a shorter and much less gaunt version of Frog's current form, meeting his frozen incomprehension with the sort of expression she might have used to coax a feral cat out of hiding. "And I'm not a vision or whatever, either. See? Solid!" She poked herself, then seemed to think better of the demonstration and poked him, instead. He squeaked. "I'd give you a muffin, but we're kind of out. Um. Lucca? Help?"

Glenn glanced wildly between them, but his eyes had the feverish blear of one who had lost sight of the border between reality and nightmare. Belatedly Lucca wondered if she should have doffed her helmet.

There was, she decided, no way for this conversation to go well.

"It's okay," Lucca said, spreading her hands to show harmless. "We're not here to hurt you."

Glenn withdrew further, pressing his back to the stones, and trembled until words shook loose. His voice lacked both the hoarseness of disuse and the warm undertones of croaks; without the archaic affectations, he sounded almost wholly unlike Frog. Then Lucca caught snatches of "coward" and "failed," which at least bought him back to a familiar place.

"Don't talk like that." Nadia's chin shifted forward into the business position. "You're alive, okay? That's what Cyrus wanted."

His trembling ceased, and "I should have _died_" turned into a snarl by the final syllable. "Your highness," he added, less venomously.

"Believe me, you shouldn't have," said Lucca, but she captured only a flicker of his attention. Apparently he had decided that if he couldn't escape his hallucinations, he could at least ignore the one that made less sense.

Refusing to meet Nadia's eyes, he muttered, "We're all damned now. Cyrus has fallen, and no one else can turn back the darkness. King, queen, country, all we loved and swore to defend—"

Nadia poked him in the chest. "You can't just give up! Cyrus is counting on you!"

Glenn slumped against the stones as if to disprove her point. "There is nothing for me but to follow. He—I cannot take his place. You must know, how he spoke of you," he began, then broke off and raised his head like a startled deer. After a moment Lucca realized that he was staring past Nadia, not at her, and she turned to watch as the shadowed moss of Frog's hair crested the cliff.

 

_Shit._

 

A few more inches, and his eyes locked with those of Glenn, who had begun to shake again. Everything shook, hands and grass and light-on-water and the air between them as excess memories tangled together and struggled to collapse.

Lucca had stayed out of her own sight, she remembered, but all that she truly remembered was committing the memory to paper before it was swallowed by the rifts in her brain. She didn't want to imagine what was happening in Frog's brain. Even Magus, who had thought it was a good idea to engage the pinnacle of evolution in single combat, hadn't been foolish enough to engage his younger self in revelatory conversation.

She bit back a warning. _I trust you. Bad things happen when I don't._

The fever-fog over Glenn's eyes began to thin. "I don't," he said, voice wavering, but finishing the verb proved beyond him. He blinked slowly, as if to give Frog time to vanish, then adopted the squint of one trying to tease apart fractured memory and déjà vu. "Who are you?"

"Thine uncle," Frog replied.

Even hunched together beneath the chattering leaves, shrouded in the mist of the falls, they could not have been mistaken for each other. Had appearance been the sole consideration, Frog might have claimed to be his own father.

"How weird is it," said Nadia, curling a blade of grass around her finger, "that I look way more like my super-great-grandmother than Frog looks like himself?"

Lucca resisted the urge to shush her; even if Glenn had been transformed, he couldn't have heard her over the tumbling water and his own heated conversation. "Well, Leene didn't spend eleven years on a mountain, either."

Nadia nodded and coiled the grass tighter. "And this is okay, right? That they're talking to each other? I mean, I think Glenn really needs it, but I keep waiting for history to blow up again."

"Frog's being careful." Insofar as anyone could be careful about sculpting himself through a feedback loop. Suppressing a sigh that would have undermined her words, she glanced again at Frog, found the universe still intact, and tried not to think about other ways that it might have been disintegrating, particularly other ways that involved Magus and the Gate Key.

Somewhat pacified, Nadia let the grass blade uncoil and fall. "And he's not going to end up going crazy or anything, right? I mean, really crazy, like that woman out by the forest."

"Fiona."

"Right."

"This isn't the same."

The answer didn't quite match the question, but Nadia declined to press. Her gaze and body shifted restlessly until she made a startled noise and pulled her hand back from a stray stone, which she rolled gently toward the pile at the other end of the ledge. "I just feel so bad for him," she said. "Both of him."

Glenn had come to bury as best he could; the soil didn't allow for much, so he had stacked stones into a burial mound. Despite his interruption, only a few patches of armor, most of them scorched black, remained visible through the rocks. Lucca didn't want to consider whether it was fortunate that Cyrus's remains were downwind.

"Frog's strong," she said, half to herself. "Sometimes he needs somebody to hit him over the head and remind him, but he is." In the shadows of the trees, Frog rose slowly, setting a thin hand on Glenn's shoulder. _But the kind of strong he can be right now isn't enough._ His lank hair fell over his face as he approached, leaving Glenn crouched in heavy silence.

Nadia hastened to her feet with a concerned smile. "How're you doing?"

He tucked his hair behind his ear and echoed her expression, muted and shadowed. His voice faltered: "I fear I am—he is—mine apologies that I have so long delayed us. He hath fixed his mind upon his own unmaking, and I cannot yet discern what path he may follow hence."

_Darkness and briars._ The space-time continuum, or whatever meddled in it, had known what to do with Marle when she set her doom into motion. Frog's existence still teetered within his own sphere of influence.

The clatter of rock drew Lucca's attention to where Glenn had resumed work on his mound; Frog's followed a beat behind. Glenn seemed less focused on his task than desperate to blot out any focus at all.

Lucca took a deep breath and stood. "So don't leave him."

Nadia's brow furrowed as Frog's gaze lingered on his younger self. "But what about—" popped out before Lucca made a sufficiently firm zipper gesture at her.

"I mean it," Lucca continued. From her current angle, Frog's hair covered most of his face, but she caught the tension in his jaw. "Stay with him until you're sure he has a future. Make it right. We can wait."

_Except we can't. We all know we can't._ She made zippers again at Nadia, who appeared on the fretful verge of saying as much.

At the edge of earshot, fumbled stones slid and scraped together. Perhaps Glenn was sabotaging himself, unwilling to surrender the last glimpses of Cyrus to the earth and even less willing to face whatever followed. Frog watched a moment longer, then turned back to her, his shoulders stooped. "My selfishness shameth me. Such matters pale before—"

"This _is_ important." The moment mattered, if not in the same way as moments that ripped holes through time. Lucca lowered her voice to ensure Glenn didn't hear: "This is _you_."

If Nadia had any further misgivings, she seemed to be ignoring them in favor of leaning in to whisper. Her hand rested on Frog's arm. "And you're really strong so he's really strong, too, but I think he needs you to help him figure that out. Okay?"

Frog sighed, bending his head lower. "Leene—"

Realization stiffened him into silence, but only after the word had escaped and hung heavy in the air. A gust blew his hair from his widened eyes.

"It's okay," said Nadia, leaving her hand in place.

There had been another of whatever Masa and Mune were, somewhere in Zeal, and she had been less obnoxious than her brothers by sole virtue of not popping up later to converse in circles. She said something that Lucca deemed significant enough to warrant a reference in her notebook, something about butterflies dreaming themselves into bowling balls. At the time Lucca hadn't been able to conceive of dreaming deeply enough to drown identity.

Perhaps all it took was losing sight of the surface.

With effort, Lucca kept her voice low. "Just keep writing. You'll lose whatever you don't write down. And remember to write that you're not crazy."

Nadia patted his arm again, smiling shakily, then flung her arms around him in a hug that drew a startled noise and percussive chorus from Glenn. "You're going to be okay," she whispered, almost below Lucca's hearing. "Just take care of yourself."

Eye contact, Lucca decided, was the least she could do. "Take care. You know where we'll be."

He held her gaze, unblinking, until she suspected that he knew better than she would have liked. "Aye. Look to thine own welfare, as well."

There was nothing left to say that could be said. Frog drifted back to kneel beside Glenn, sparing Lucca the feeling of his eyes as she descended the rope ladder. Once she reached the base, there was only wind and water and the weight of loss. A beat later there was also Nadia, who held tight to the final rung before letting go.

They had made it most of the way down before Nadia spoke again: "You're not going to wait for him."

Lucca halted, since the only thing less comfortable than having this conversation would be having it while tripping over broken boughs. She addressed a pool half-hidden by branches. "I can't."

"Think he'll forgive you?"

"It doesn't matter if he does." This sounded very nearly convincing. "I dragged him into this. I'm not going to let him get himself killed because I screwed up."

Frog trailed along in the wake of the timestream, buffeted by scraps of ruined realities. Even if Glenn's future had been as clear and solid as a diamond, Frog's instability was too great a threat; infiltrating Magus's castle would be a surer death sentence than leaving Glenn suicidal and alone. _We'd be lucky if he only got _himself_ killed._

Reluctance rode out on Nadia's sigh. "I guess. It just feels wrong. Everything feels wrong now."

"The whole world's wrong," Lucca pointed out, hoping that this signaled an end to the discussion. As she turned away from the pool to resume walking, an unnatural gleam pulled her gaze back. Realization nearly compelled her to pretend that she hadn't noticed anything.

"Is something—" Nadia peered over her shoulder. "Wait, is that the Masamune? I thought Frog had it."

_Nothing like time travel to double a headache._ "He does. This is the other one." Gesturing for Nadia to keep watch, Lucca pushed aside an uprooted sapling and squinted into the pool until she had made out the full shape of the blade against the stones. The water was cold enough to sting; drawing the sharp half of the Masamune onto the grass left her hands numb and mottled.

She had just pulled a tiny flame between her palms for warmth when her hair fluttered at her ears and a pair of shapes bobbed at the periphery of her vision.

"You're not fixing _anything_," said Mune.

She scowled and clapped the fire out. "You don't know about that. That doesn't happen for hundreds of years."

"Human," said Masa, with more dismissal than contempt. "She is always dreaming."

A curious noise announced that Nadia had ceased keeping watch in favor of joining what was already too disjointed to qualify as a conversation. "So if you two touch the other two yous, what happens? Does the whole world explode?"

"Why would we?" asked Mune. "We don't overlap."

"You're—" Lucca fumbled for the right word and found every candidate wanting— "fractal. Sort of." Something terribly important flickered like the ghost of a butterfly. "The pieces are so small that time can't hold you, so you don't leave holes."

"Yeah, we have _manners_." Mune flicked his left foot and was suddenly balanced on the tip of a branch, leaves rattling like castanets around him.

The butterfly of significance flitted out of reach. _Dammit, just make _sense_ for once. We don't have time for games._ For all the good she expected it to do, Lucca directed at Masa the sort of look that should have pinned any insect down. "You're not outside of time. You're more... through it. It can't hold you."

"No more than you can hold the wind," Mune interjected, unhelpfully. Nadia made a startled noise as her ponytail went vertical.

"There was a wise man once," said Masa, "who claimed the world was destroyed and recreated every moment. And that's what passes for wise with you." Mune alit beside him, and they grinned at each other as if they had just shared a favorite joke.

"There is no mesh fine enough," said Mune, "and it's only ever mesh. It can't be solid."

"And the arrow can never pass through."

"Except when it always does, because an ignorant lunk with decent aim beats infinity every time."

The grins vanished abruptly as Masa added, "You aren't our lunk," and vanished with his twin in a sharp twist of light.

Lucca waited to see whether they had any additional parting shots, then nudged the blade with her foot. "Well, that was almost completely useless."

A warning wind tore past her, knocking her off-balance and away from the Masamune. Nadia caught her elbow to keep her from tumbling into the pool.

"Let's just go," said Lucca, on the off-chance that this would work.

Nadia shook her head. "What if a bad guy finds the Masamune?"

"It's broken, so the Mystics aren't going to care. And I think Masa and Mune can take care of themselves."

With a worried frown, Nadia knelt and poked the blade. Furious gusts failed to result. When the sword allowed her to slip her palm beneath it and raise the tip from the ground, she looked up and said, "Can I borrow your bag, Lucca? I think they'll let me carry them."

Had history been a wildebeest, it would have been peppered with arrowheads, dragging its broken hind legs, and still capable of snorting frantically at this latest potential assault upon its integrity. Then again, how could a paradox center around itself around Masa and Mune? _And it's not like I'm letting her get near the Mystics with it._

Lucca shrugged off her knapsack and took a moment to rearrange its less sword-proof contents. "Don't let it poke out where anyone can see it. I don't even want to know what would happen if someone thinks the new queen's walking around with a broken legendary sword."

"Aye-aye. Yarrr." Ignoring Lucca's efforts to chastise her for slipping into unwanted character, Nadia eased the tip of the Masamune into the knapsack and added, "Maybe I should cut my hair really short and dye it. Has hair dye been invented yet?"

"If it has, I don't know where we'd find it on short notice. Just keep the scarf on in public." Lucca started to reach for the flap of her knapsack, then thought better of it; no sense getting mountain debris blown into her face if Masa and Mune were feeling territorial.

The task fell to Nadia, who shouldered the knapsack with the practiced ease of one who sometimes remembered to pack when she ran away from home. She pulled her ponytail free of a strap, then turned to gaze up at path they'd descended. "Frog called me 'Leene,'" she said quietly. "What if he starts thinking I'm someone he made up because he was lonely?"

_Crono was real_ echoed frantically through Lucca's mind. _Mom walked and we saved the world._ What she couldn't remember doing she could remember writing down, and a string of failed creative writing assignments assured her that her imagination's contributions must have been minimal.

"I just don't want him to forget me if..." Nadia let the word hang, staring up toward the summit a moment longer, then shook her head as she turned and headed back along the path. "It can't take _that_ long to get the Gate Key back. And he'll be okay while we're gone, right? That's what's important."

"He'll be fine." _Glenn's way too confused to try killing himself now._

Lucca's response must have come out sharper than she intended, or else Nadia had wandered deep into her own thoughts; all conversation died until they came to level ground. Then Nadia glanced over with a small smile and said, "Hey, I remember you said the Frog from the better timeline got to meet Cyrus again. I mean, as a ghost. Can you tell me about it?"

They filled in the gaps in her memory together, weaving him an ending from scraps and speculation.

 

The Queen's Head had done nothing to improve itself in their absence. Nor had Toma, whose daily activity, as far as Lucca could discern, might well have consisted entirely of changing barstools. She caught Toma's eye and moved her forefingers in what she thought was a very clear outline of a boat. When he furrowed his brow and waved his hand in a vague, confused spiral, she shook her head and signaled for him to wait just a bit longer. This he seemed to understand.

"Creeps," Nadia muttered from just ahead of her, turning the corner into the hall. "I bet I could wave the Masamune around they wouldn't even _notice_."

"Let's not test that." Lucca glanced about for signs of any other guests, then let herself into the room she'd used the night before. It remained in the same degree of disarray in which she'd left it. For want of other options, she tossed a scratchy bedsheet at Nadia and said, "Here, wrap the sword with this."

Once her knapsack was free of temperamental spirits, Lucca slung it over her shoulder and adjusted her glasses on her nose, hoping the gesture didn't make her look as nervous and preoccupied as she was certain it did. "Anyway," she said, sliding backward a step, "there's some stuff I have to take care of with Toma, so you can just hang out back here until—"

Nadia's hand caught her shoulder with the force of a lobster claw. "Don't you dare."

_So much for hoping this could be easy._ Lucca twisted futilely to either side, then sighed and said, "Look—"

"I'm coming with you if I have to glue myself to you."

"You don't even know where to find glue here." This had been the wrong thing to say; Nadia's fingers dug in harder. "Okay, ow. Can we talk about this without giving me bruises?"

Guilt flickered over Nadia's face. The pressure on Lucca's shoulder remained firm, however, until Nadia abruptly let go and snatched both of Lucca's hands in hers.

"Easy" retreated a little deeper into the realm of fond yet distant dreams, leaving Lucca with "blunt." "Look," she began again, resisting the impulse to draw fire into her palms, "just think about this for a minute, okay? This is dangerous. It's _stupid_. And it's not going to get less dangerous and stupid if you're there; you'd just get killed, too. Do you get that? If I screw this up, I'm going to die."

"You won't. I won't let you." Nadia's grip did not relent. "Besides, if you screw up—which you _won't_—everybody's going to die. That's the whole point, isn't it?"

Everybody died in a future so many generations removed that even names were lost, a tragedy as remote as the casualties alluded to in a history lecture. Even first-hand experience of the ruin—the crunch of broken glass beneath a shoe, the choke of dead dust in the air—dulled with distance. The only moment that mattered was the immediate one.

"You wouldn't die _yet_." Lucca's voice thickened in her throat. "You could, I don't know, forget about it. And you could at least—"

It took several seconds to register that Nadia had slapped her. In numb silence, Lucca raised the hand that Nadia had released and pressed it to her stinging cheek. Nadia's arm quivered.

"Sorry," they said in unison.

Lucca weighed her next words carefully as Nadia reached to take her hands again, without indicating whether this was more a promise of no more slapping or a prevention of escape. She was surprised that she had to fight an impulse to cling.

She was still fiddling with the balance when Nadia said, "We're in this together, okay? I didn't follow you through that Gate so you could ditch me."

"I'm not trying to ditch you." Clinging was very near to winning. "Believe me. But I'm going into the Mystic stronghold, which is—" _not a suicide mission—_ "crazy. And stupid. It's a really bad idea, but it's the only one I've got right now."

The Guardian chin set itself. "I'm not afraid of Mystics. I've been to tons of formal dinners with Mystics. I even know which Mystic forks to use. I—"

"It's not just the Mystics," Lucca cut in. "It's _me_. I can feel myself changing faster and faster all the time, and I don't know who I'll end up."

Nadia's grip tightened until Lucca half-expected to hear the grinding of metacarpals. "I. Won't. Let. You. Okay?"

"If I say 'okay,' will you stop breaking my hands?"

After a moment's consideration, Nadia offered a wan smile and let go. "And don't even think about trying to run," she said. "We both know I could catch you without breaking a sweat."

"Even in those stupid shoes."

"Even in these stupid shoes."

Lucca looked away first, to forestall a noise that might no longer have been a laugh by the time it cleared her tongue. She addressed the backs of her knuckles. "I really hope you don't regret this."

"Not a chance." Nadia patted her shoulder. "Besides, who else is going to hold you back if you go crazy again?"

 

_I really hope_ I _don't regret this_.

Lucca wasn't sure yet whether the boat was regrettable. It had two oars, which seemed like the right number, and there were no obvious holes in the bottom, but she was a bit troubled that the boat had, according to Toma, been lent as repayment for a favor. The concept of anyone playing debtor to Toma was too slippery for her brain to wrap around.

"Can't believe I let you talk me into this," said Toma, whose brain seemed to be experiencing similar difficulties; this was his fourth variation on the same theme. He had yet to make any effort to head back to shore, however, despite the advent of evening and the dark clouds brewing in the eastern sky. "This shit is either crazy or some kind of military secret. If you girls aren't mixed up with the Mystics, how come you know about this secret way in, eh?"

This was at least a new angle from which to defend herself. "Listen," said Lucca, holding up the hand that was not pressed against Nadia to count off her points, "it's a long story, you wouldn't believe a word of it, and I'm not paying you to ask questions. And if we were working for the Mystics, we wouldn't be trying to sneak in and steal from them, right?" This sounded roughly as sensible out loud as it had in her head. "And anyway, I'm not totally sure this entrance exists yet."

Toma's eyebrow scampered halfway up his forehead. _Dammit, mouth, your turn was over._

"Because it's magic," Nadia interjected. "And the maybe the magic isn't done yet. It's not like she can see into the future or anything. Um."

The lack of personal space allowed Lucca to elbow her in the ribs with no more than a twitch.

Over the course of several long seconds, Toma's eyebrow retreated. He ceased rowing to stretch his arms. "You girls should've brought your swashbuckling bodyguard. Where'd he go, anyway?"

"That's none of your business," Lucca replied, overlapping with Nadia's sharp "He's _fine_."

Tom gave them a long-suffering look that might have worked better on the face of someone who hadn't drunk most of Lucca's remaining cash. After a final roll of his shoulders, he dipped the oars back into the water and said, "Seriously, what's this all about?"

Aggressive secrecy didn't seem wise when Toma was the one rowing the boat. She and Nadia could have rowed in a pinch, perhaps, but Lucca suspected it would be in dizzy little circles. So she shrugged and said, "Saving the world."

He laughed. "What, are you girls gonna sneak in the back door and beat the Mystics all by yourselves?"

"I mean the _whole_ world. If we screw this up, there's no more life." Despite everything, Lucca felt her lips quirk. "Except for the rats."

Nadia looked up from the water. "People, too."

"A kid."

"_At least_ a kid."

Toma glanced between them, muttered something about how lucky they were that he needed the excitement, and squinted at the twilit waves. "So what's this thing look like, again? All I see's water."

"It's a vortex," Lucca replied, then reconsidered Toma's vocabulary. "Swirly water."

"Like that!" Nadia's excitement nearly propelled her off the thwart and tipped the edge of the boat perilously near to the water. By the time Lucca was able to focus on anything other than maintaining a white-knuckle grip on her seat, she could feel the vessel beneath her being tugged into a gradually accelerating spiral.

Toma swore his way up and down the spectrum, eyes riveted to the dark maw of the vortex widening before him, and grinned the manic grin of one whose legitimate adventuring nerve had just locked his self-preservation instinct in a closet. Apparently the passage in this era functioned only on demand, which was either a reassuring sign that it was in use, or behavior ominously reminiscent of a trapdoor spider's. Lucca supposed she wouldn't have to savor that mystery for long, at least.

"Hold your breath," she said, for Toma's benefit, "and hope we don't end up in the kitchen."

The boat twisted one last time before falling forward.


	14. Chapter 14

Lucca landed supine, coughing and sputtering, on what felt like a many-clawed Mystic. Her thrashing efforts at escape ended when she snapped several tiny limbs and determined her captor to be a prickly bush.

"Ow," said Nadia from somewhere above.

The faint glow of evening filtered through dark blobs. After some fumbling, Lucca found her glasses dangling from the antenna on her helmet and set them back in place, making the world a still-dim but less fuzzy place. The vague white shape dangling overhead resolved into Nadia's leg.

_Beats the kitchen, at least._ Lucca spat out a leaf. "Everyone okay?"

Nadia grunted affirmatively, and was a moment later hanging by her arms from the branch that had caught her. She swung back and forth a few times, scattering bark and broken foliage, then hit the ground in a crouch.

"Warn a guy next time," muttered Toma from somewhere on Lucca's left.

"I told you to hold your breath." With Nadia's help, she made her way gingerly back to being perpendicular to the ground. As she brushed off her stinging legs, she took in what she could of the area in the deepening dark: densely wooded, noisy with insects, and in places suggestive of a path. She tried to recall whether there had been trees around the Mystic's stronghold and came up blank, though she suspected that a haunted forest was part of keeping up diabolical appearances.

_And then the castle collapses and buries everything, and in four hundred years, it's a cave. Lavos is hell on geography._

Rippling patterns of light and sound suggested the location of the exit pool. Toma had landed on the ground just beside it, perhaps by virtue of being rather heavier than his companions. The boat lay upside-down just at the water's edge, and a vegetation-free strip extended beyond him into the dark.

A series of light clatters announced that Nadia was reclaiming escaped quarrels. "I don't see any Mystics yet."

"And let's keep it that way as long as we can." Lucca strained to hear anything other than the probably hand-selected-for-creepiness wildlife.

Toma's joints popped as he stood and stretched, punctuating each movement with a curse. "Hey," he said after some realignment work on his spine, "we're on that Mystic island, right? The one with the cliffs they say a spider couldn't climb?"

"That's the one," Lucca replied. Leathery fluttering heralded the presence of bats.

"You girls realize we gotta be the first people ever set foot on this damn thing?" A teaspoon of bravado leaked out of his tone. "First people who came here by choice, I mean." A tablespoon excused itself. "Definitely the first people who're gonna make it back alive."

Sobriety settled in until Nadia announced, "Look, I found an oar!" This was followed by a flat wooden smack as it bounced off the bottom of the boat.

Toma tch'ed at her. "Keep it down. You want Mystics to come sniffing around here?"

"Sorry." The next quarrel she found slid into place with minimal clatter.

Lucca interrupted the continued quest for quarrels: "We need to get moving. There's not much light left, and I bet this is the kind of place where that makes a difference." Something in the distance made a noise between a hoot and a howl. "Don't attack anything unless you have to. We just want to sneak in, get the Gate Key, and get the hell back out."

Vegetation encroached from every angle, necessitating a single-file march. Toma led, as he had the least trouble picking out the path in the deepening dark and the best odds of hacking through stubborn underbrush; Nadia followed with a loaded crossbow pointed carefully away from his head; Lucca brought up the rear, palms itching with magic gathered in case of emergency. No army could have hoped to invade along such a route, which was, perhaps, why no watch appeared to have been set on it.

The moon was a sliver hash-marked by branches, but its light was just enough to outline a gate ahead. What snatches Lucca recalled of Magus's castle involved an elaborate front entrance that creaked slowly open, which must have been impractical when a Mystic or two needed to nip out on an errand. _Bet this would've been a lot easier the first time around if we took the service entrance._

"Any idea where we're gonna find this thing of yours?" Toma whispered as they neared the gate.

"Nope." Had Lucca anticipated breaking into Magus's Castle, she would have recorded every detail of its interior in her notebook; as it was, she had two paragraphs and distorted flickers of memory. "If we're lucky, it's sitting out in the open, maybe with other spoils." _And if we're unlucky, Magus sleeps with it around his neck._ Aloud she continued, "We'll need to keep our ears open in case—"

A bat collided with the side of her helmet. Lucca managed not to scream only because her alarm manifested in fists full of fire.

"What the _hell_?" yelped Toma.

Lucca hissed at him, gesturing hard for silence. Her fingers trailed the last wisp of flame to her lips.

"She's not a witch," Nadia said quickly.

For a long moment Toma stared at them as if they were his opponents in a poker game, in a silence broken only by the rustle of batwings overhead. "Right," he said at length, "and you just happen to be the spitting image of the queen, and your bodyguard took off just for the hell of it. Funny old world."

Nadia set her jaw. "And we're trying to save it, remember?"

"Yeah, you keep saying that."

Lucca took a deep breath, then formed a little tongue of flame above her forefinger and held it out for him to stare at. Honesty seemed the most expedient option. "Listen. We're time travelers. I learned how to do this from a magical kilwala who said he was some kind of war god. That thing we're trying to get back opens up tunnels through time, and we need it to stop the planet from being destroyed in the future." When he kept staring, she flicked the flame behind her and added, "If you want out, the boat's back that way."

Toma's poker face folded into scarcely muffled laughter. "That's the craziest story I ever heard," he said, with worrisome cheer. "And this is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever done. No way am I turning back now—I gotta see how this ends, maybe pick up a souvenir."

_And in ten years, this guy only loses an eye. Amazing._ As Nadia chirped a thank-you, Lucca crept as close as she could to the gate without losing the cover of the trees. The courtyard between the forest and castle extended farther than she would have liked, with too much light spilling out through windows and wide gaps between statues large enough to serve as hiding spots. At least, she hoped those were statues.

Tense waiting brought no sign of a patrol. "Okay," she whispered, "we need to stay off the path and zigzag between those gargoyles until we get to that little door on the right. If anything goes wrong, run back to the vortex. Don't wait for me."

Nadia gave her the affronted look of one who had no intention of leaving anyone behind under any circumstances. "No way."

"I have a back-up plan."

"You being here alone is a _bad plan_."

"Then don't let anything go wrong."

Unappeased, Nadia flipped her ponytail with much more force than necessary as she turned back to the castle. "You mean that little door over there, right?"

This would, Lucca supposed, have to suffice. "Right." She stared hard at the lit windows around the entrance, straining for any sign of Mystics roaming inside, but their silhouettes seemed to have better places to be. She took a deep breath, tried the gate, and found it locked.

"Here, I've got it." Toma shook his arm, allowing two thin metal rods to slide from his sleeve into his hand. He slid one into the lock and fiddled speculatively after it with the other.

Lucca snorted. "Yeah, you're a legitimate adventurer, all right."

"Hey, some of the best adventures are behind locked doors." Something clinked inside the lock, and the gate swung inward on oiled hinges.

The castle loomed ahead, dwarfing the forest around it, teeming with fire and shadows, and Lucca felt suddenly small and fragile before it. _One wrong move and the future dies with us._ She couldn't remember how she felt when the world ended in front of her on a computer screen.

Lucca squared her shoulders refused to let herself think about the faceless specter of Crono twisting in a black wind. "One at a time to that first gargoyle," she decided. "Me, then Toma, than Nadia. Unless you want to turn back. It's really not too late for that."

Stubborn silence answered her.

"Okay, then. Wait for me to wave."

Tall grasses whipped her ankles as she darted to the nearest statue. Her heart throbbed in her throat. _Stay alert, stay focused_, Lucca told herself, but the courtyard appeared empty, and she had nothing to focus on beyond the immediate and physical. When she finally pressed flat against the cold stone, she discovered that she hadn't been breathing enough.

Toma and Nadia took only half an eternity each to catch up.

"No one saw us," Nadia whispered, as Lucca tried to pant quietly. "Right?"

Toma peered around a wing toward the castle. "Don't think they could, with how thick the shadows are out here. Gonna get dicier when we get closer."

"Then we'll be sneakier," said Lucca. "If we take a detour around the middle, we can avoid—"

Nadia hissed. "Did you hear that?"

Silence fell like a bowling ball.

Lucca was on the verge of declaring the coast clear when Toma brandished his knife and said, "Sounds like they've got a guard dog."

A growl much too low and loud to be a dog's raised the hairs on Lucca's neck. She spun around with her gun drawn, unwilling to break the darkness with fire, and struggled for a glimpse of anything in the direction of the sound. Her breath caught as the light glinted from dozens of sharp points clustered on the eastern end of the courtyard. _Maybe it hasn't seen us,_ suggested an optimistic part of her brain, just before it stalked forward. The yellow gleam of a window highlighted the flexing of claws the size of scythes.

The name had fallen into one of the potholes in Lucca's brain, but the shape remained; the same claws flashed in the darkness of the cave that would one day bury the courtyard. When the beast growled again, building toward a roar, a crossbow quarrel flew toward its torso.

_Magic_, Lucca remembered in the instant that the quarrel connected with a dull thud. She grabbed Nadia's wrist and yanked her around the corner of the statue. Toma was quick-witted enough to follow before a high-pressure blast of water tore off the tip of a wing.

"Holy shit," he breathed.

"Don't hit it," said Lucca, "or that happens. I'm going to have to use magic." She pushed on through an attempted interruption from Nadia: "And that's going to blow our cover, so you two _run_. I mean it. Got it?"

The beast leapt with an earth-shaking thump to their side of the statue. Lucca lobbed a hasty fireball at it and fled for cover, hoping against all odds that Nadia and Toma had the sense to escape. The sound of rending fabric filled her ears as the beast swiped at her and caught the flap of her knapsack.

Already she was short of breath. Lucca feinted to the right before darting behind another statue, which lost several talons to a single punch. She tried not to think about how she stood in a beam of light from the windows. All her thoughts were needed to draw fire before she had to run again.

"Oy!" shouted Toma. A thunk suggested that he had thrown something at the beast's back. "Over here!"

Alarmed, Lucca peered around the edge of her cover and watched the beast send a wave like a fist toward Toma, who dived behind a statue. When it advanced on his hiding place, growling, a crossbow quarrel bounced off the back of its head.

They couldn't possibly keep this up for long, so Lucca had to ensure that however long they gave her was long enough. She poured herself recklessly into Flare, shivering as all her heat rushed into her hands. When Toma drew the creature's aggression back from Nadia, Lucca grabbed her statue for balance, swung around for a clear shot, and pushed concentrated fire into the belly of the beast.

It fell smoking, hollowing to ash. Lucca held herself upright against the statue until she was certain it wouldn't so much as twitch again, then let herself sink down to catch her breath. The grass was cold and wet beneath her.

After a moment it occurred to her that no one was running for the vortex, that Nadia hadn't tackled her yet, and that Toma was swearing wildly. She grabbed what was left of the nearest statue and struggled upright.

Dark fluid streamed between the fingers of Toma's hand, which was pressed hard against the right side of his face. His other hand swatted away an aggressively solicitous Nadia (and the ghost of an alien elsewhere, palms shining with salve that glittered like ice). "Not deep" was his first coherent statement, followed by "How the hell did that thing move so fast?"

_Well, you_ had _two eyes_. Or maybe he still did; Lucca's realities weren't obligated to align. "You need something for that," she said, trying to force her thoughts back in order. "Like a doctor. You need to be running for the boat now. Why aren't you running?"

Nadia offered an arm to wean her off the statue's support. "Maybe they didn't notice us."

Lucca was spared having to respond when the shadow of the statue trembled and burst upward like a geyser, flowing into the horned shape of a laughing monster. Nadia yelped and tugged Lucca with her away from it.

"Don't hit it!" Lucca gave Nadia a hard shove toward the gate. "Just run!" Without waiting to see whether Nadia cooperated, she flicked fire at the shadow, which laughed like boiling milk as it seeped back under the darkness.

In the corner of her eye, Toma cursed and kicked at another of the creatures. Tendrils of liquid clung to his boot until the shadow sucked them back in. As he drew his leg back for another clumsy assault, Lucca lobbed a flame ahead of him.

Magus's Castle was a piñata of monsters, she recalled; once the trickle began, there was no stopping the flood. She held fire in either hand to keep the shadows at bay and glanced about for Nadia, who was nowhere in sight. Lucca refused to consider that she might not already be in the forest.

"Well, this is going straight to shit," said Toma, making a cautious effort to pry his hand from his face.

"It's already gone." Lucca whirled her arms to drive away a suspiciously viscous patch of darkness at her feet, then said, "There's no time for the boat. Can you swim?"

From behind came slamming, rattling, the pounding of footsteps.

"Did the Zenan Channel twice on a dare. Naked."

Her eye twitched. "Then swim" was the best she could manage as serpentine wildfire arced between her palms, guzzling what remained of her energy for fuel. She flicked her wrists and sowed a wall of flame between herself and Toma.

He leapt back, clutching again at his wounded eye. What he said was lost in crackling and wooziness; what mattered was that he ran.

Lucca stumbled as she twisted back toward the castle, landing on her hip and arm. _I'm swimming, too_, she thought, and was annoyed with herself. Crawling away from the flames didn't seem to work. Her head wasn't clear. Her head needed to be clear.

Somewhere on the wrong side of the fire, Nadia screamed.

_Dammit, dammit, dammit._ Enough of the haze lifted from Lucca's eyes for her to see what had cornered her: bones held together without visible bonds, skeletons with spears and shoes. Their empty eye sockets made it impossible to tell whether they were staring at her or the fire; their spears were pointed much less ambiguously.

Lucca shook her head in hopes of coaxing more blood to it, then pushed at the ground until part of her rose away from it. "Magic!" she shouted, then fell prey to a coughing fit. The skeletons rattled. "Magus is interested in that. And she's with me. The other girl." _Please have brains in there somewhere._

A spearhead tapped curiously against her helmet.

Grimacing, she reached inside for any scrap of strength that could burn. Through the dark stars circling her vision, she watched a flicker smaller than a match head dance briefly above her thumb.

"Now that _is_ interesting," said a voice from above the level of the skeletons. Lucca couldn't convince her head to tilt back far enough to see the speaker's face, but the purple pants jogged a memory. _Not Flea. Not Ozzie. The other dangerous one. Slash._

"She's with me," Lucca said again, struggling not to slur. One demonstration was enough, she hoped, because she had no reserves left to tap.

The blade of a sword caught the firelight as its flat slid under her chin to lift her head. From her new angle, she had a view of Slash's belt. "So the human queen is a witch too, eh?"

Bits of Lucca took turns seizing up, starting in her chest and ending precariously in her throat. Every response carried seeds of disaster inside, so she gave none.

Slash snorted and pulled the sword away, letting her chin hit the grass. "Lock 'em and bring 'em in. You, get a sweep going for whoever else came along."

Abruptly it ceased to matter that Lucca had no fuel left to burn, as she could no longer work out how to feed the furnace. This had happened before—more than once, surely, since the frustration of cold hands came with so many fragments of context—but she had no idea what to do about it now. More pressing was the need to stand and persuade her legs to walk before the skeletons became less polite with their spears. For a relatively bright moment she thought that she would be allowed to keep her knapsack, but one of the skeletons wrenched it away as soon as she rose.

To her mingled relief and annoyance, she heard Nadia off to her left: "Listen, I'm not the queen! Just because we look the same doesn't mean we're the same person. I mean, you guys all look the same, and you're different people, right? Er, different skeletons."

Lucca tried to turn to make shushing gestures and got poked in the shoulder for her trouble. "Let me do the talking," she said loudly. In response, the butt of a spear thumped hard against her helmet, and her skeleton escorts rattled at her.

"Are you okay?" called Nadia. "Ow!"

Twisting her neck as far as she could without attracting spears, Lucca tried to discern Nadia's condition. Her crossbow and quiver had passed into the possession of her bony captors, and she was rubbing her hip reproachfully, but there were no signs of actual harm. The bedsheet-wrapped pieces of the Masamune were nowhere in sight; Lucca could only hope that this was not because Slash had confiscated them.

Nadia pointed at her eye and moved in her lips in the exaggerated shape of "Toma?"

Lucca shrugged and inclined her head toward the forest, which earned her another smack to the helmet. At the edge of her vision, imps directed plumes of water into the blaze blocking their access to the forest gate. With any luck, Toma would be well clear of the forest before the patrols moved beyond the courtyard.

After a fretful glance at the skeletons, Nadia mouthed what looked like "Back-up plan?"

"This is it," Lucca mouthed back. She missed Nadia's reaction when the skeletons shoved her forward into the doorway.

 

The castle corridors were familiar only in the broadest strokes: wide, dark, decorated with the apparent goal of making sure that no evil warlock cliché felt left out. The crowds of Mystics worked against the overall effect, as it was difficult for a hallway to intimidate when it was thronged with imps, gargoyles, and naga-ettes that appeared in be in various stages of getting ready for bed and just waking up from a good day's sleep. The skeletons introduced the butts of their spears to gawkers who stepped or slithered too near.

At the moment, none of the interest appeared overtly homicidal. _Because if you're going to screw up an infiltration, you've got to screw it up spectacularly._ Most of the interest also seemed to have attached itself to Nadia, whom rumor had likely already transformed into a warrior queen with a secret Mystic heritage. There was no telling what the Mystics would think once they discovered that the new queen of Guardia was still in her castle.

_No, one crisis at a time._ Imposing double doors approached with the attitude of a destination.

As much as Lucca wanted to give Nadia a reassuringly confident look, the skeletons had rearranged them into a single-file march and adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward twisting about in line. Being smug at the architecture did nothing for Lucca's self-assurance.

The doors swung noisily inward.

Here was one thing going right, at least; this appeared to be some sort of throne room, and Magus, looking simultaneously less haggard and more weary than what was left of Lucca's mental impression of him, appeared to be the one in command of it. Ozzie, wearing a dressing gown and a crooked nightcap, hovered beside him with the urgency of one who was not assured of the final say. This raised the odds of a successful dialogue from "abysmal" to merely "dreadful." Any greater optimism was impossible as long as Lucca held on to even the shadow of a recollection of dealing with Magus.

No one spoke until the doors slammed shut and Magus said, "What the hell is this?"

"They slew the Heckran," replied one of the skeletons, in a voice that sounded like it had been stitched together at the phoneme level from the screams of the damned. Lucca hoped that this would be the extent of any skeleton's involvement in the conversation.

"Impossible!" Ozzie snapped, knocking his nightcap further askew.

"Clearly not." Magus narrowed his eyes at Nadia, who, to Lucca's dismay, glared back. "How many others were there?"

A panicked blurt would put them on Toma's trail, so Lucca counted to a calmer three before saying, "Just us." This time the sharp end of a spear poked meaningfully under her chin, with just enough force to draw blood.

"Silence!" Ozzie's nightcap landed on his shoulder. "Two puny humans would have been a snack for the Heckran!"

One of the skeletons make a noise somewhere between a throat being cleared and a sack of screws being fed through a meat grinder. "They possess magic," it volunteered.

Ozzie barked a laugh. "Impossible! Does Slash know you're spreading these idiotic rumors?"

"Now that _would_ be impossible," said Magus, dryly. "They're incapable of fabrication." His gaze drifted accusingly from Nadia to Lucca, as if they existed for the express purpose of giving him a headache. "Are you certain that these absurd creatures are human? One has taken the form of the new queen, and the other appears to be wearing a rather poor human disguise."

The indignant motion of Lucca's head left another scratch on her throat.

"We have locked them." This contribution came from a skeleton uncomfortably near Lucca's ear. "They cannot be under a glamour."

"Im—" Ozzie began, but Magus's snarl silenced him.

In the pause that followed, Nadia opened her mouth as if to argue her identity, then thought better of it. A trickle of blood charted a course through the hollow of Lucca's throat. Any further speaking would be the final resort.

"Enough," said Magus at length, in tones that dismissed the entire evening. "Instruct our spies in Guardia to maintain constant surveillance of the queen. As for these two, give them to Flea. He should enjoy solving this puzzle."

Shadows oozed out from behind the furniture as Ozzie sulked and Magus headed for a door in the back of the room. No penultimate resort had anything to say for itself, so Lucca cut straight to the drastic option: "Janus!"

The spear drew blood again, enough to make Nadia gasp, but Lucca scarcely noticed. Her attention was fixed on Magus as he halted and turned, the skin of his face pulled taut over scarcely contained expressions. At the flick of his hand, the spear left her throat.

With the perfect combination of words, she could ensure his interest without compromising the wrong information or giving the minions anything too interesting to report. Lucca had neither the time nor the energy to work out what that combination might be. "Zeal! Lavos! Scha—"

Magus snapped his fingers, and a fist's worth of dark energy struck her stomach. She bent double and wheezed.

"On second thought," he said, "Flea has other business tonight. I will interrogate them myself."

Ozzie's grin glinted in the low light. "Now we're talking. I'll get us—"

"Alone."

Lucca suppressed the urge to cheer, both because it would have been a terrible idea and because it was too closely tied to the urge to retch. She straightened up slowly, caught the concern on Nadia's face, and pressed a finger to her lips.

Meanwhile Ozzie had not given up: "Are you sure that's such a good idea? We still don't know what these things are, and you're—"

Magus's glare was intense enough to melt iron, or at least startle a living shadow out of its path. "Are you questioning my competence?"

"N-not at all!" Ozzie's hands flew up into a placating posture, knocking his nightcap to the floor. "I, uh, I just remembered that I've got some to imps to check on. You know imps, you can't leave 'em unsupervised for five minutes." He hovered low for a moment to collect his nightcap, then exited through the main doors, presumably to play to the crowd.

_Crisis averted. And just in time for the next one._ Lucca's sigh was cut short when Magus snapped his fingers again and half a dozen spears prodded her toward the back door.

 

Near the end of a narrow hall, past any remotely familiar part of the castle and up several twisty flights of stairs, waited a windowless room that could have worked equally well as a storage space or a torture chamber. The light that washed in from the hall didn't outline much beyond clusters of candelabras. It wasn't a dungeon, at least.

Bones rattled near Lucca's feet, and something cold and heavy pressed around her ankles. Shackles. Nadia yelped at similar treatment and took a sharp rap to the head, while the skeleton in possession of Lucca's knapsack shuffled forward and dropped it inside the room. Letting Magus read the notebook wasn't an option; unfortunately, barring an incredible stroke of luck, neither was preventing him.

Fear and frustration bubbled over what into would have been a barrage of spear-agitating remarks, had the remarks managed to line up in an orderly fashion before Magus flicked his hand toward the candelabras. Lucca just caught the shimmer of his magic as it arced through the darkness to ignite every wick at once. _Big deal._ She squinted against the sudden brilliance. _I could do that if I practiced._

There was nothing inside but dust and candelabras, which meant nothing immediately capable of murder or mutilation, except for Magus. Lucca wished she could feel more relief at this.

"Push them inside and leave us," Magus said, and the skeletons dutifully shoved both girls forward before rattling off down the hall. Lucca tried to catch her balance, found the shackles got in the way, and collided sideways with a wall.

Nadia pulled her upright. "_Finally_," she whispered. "God, Lucca, you're hurt—"

The door slammed shut with ear-ringing force.

"Speak or move out of turn," said Magus, "and you'll wish I'd left you to my generals."

This was almost certainly a bluff, and one Lucca intended to call; pitting Magus's personal obsessions against his temper would be dicey, but not so much as letting him be the one to load all the dice. _And he's gone to too much trouble already just to kill us. Probably_. She took a deep breath and tried not to dwell on the extent to which the fate of the planet depended on her diplomacy skills.

Magus hovered slightly above the floor, for no apparent reason other to intimidate, and Lucca was annoyed at how effective this was. The excessive candlelight reduced his shadow to a pale, broken puddle and lit his eyes to a vivid shade of crimson. "You're time travelers," he said, with no hint of a question mark, "and not native to Zeal."

Lucca tried to keep her voice cool: "Did the hair give it away?"

Nadia winced at Magus's glare. "That was her turn," she pointed out, helpfully.

"Please don't talk," Lucca whispered. To Magus she said, "We're from 1000 A.D. Guess who wins the war?"

Not so much as a spark of interest met the question, putting to rest any concern that a younger Magus might have harbored some genuine loyalty to the Mystics. Instead he glanced at Nadia, who jutted her chin at him, and said, "She must be the queen's descendant, then. And do I succeed in summoning Lavos?"

Every lie was a trap that she risked fumbling into, so there was no sense in laying unnecessary ones. "You do," Lucca replied. "And it kicks your ass, wrecks your castle, and goes back to sleep."

Magus's eyes narrowed. "Lavos, magic, time travel—these are common knowledge in your era?"

"No. You know that device you found? That's how we open passages through time. I built it. I'm the only one who knows how it works."

Frowning, Magus set a hand briefly over the front of his cape. _Great. He _does_ sleep with it around his neck._ "And your magic?"

Lucca's imagination stalled. "Picked it up while traveling."

"To Zeal?" The candle flames blazed higher. "You will show me how to use the device, and you will show me the passage."

"Couldn't if I wanted to. It doesn't exist anymore. Yet." Without giving him a chance to force the conversation farther down that road, Lucca took a deep breath and shook her metaphorical dice: "But I _can_—"

A wave of glittering black energy shot out of Magus's hand, too fast for Lucca to dodge, but it wasn't aimed at her. She whirled around in time to see Nadia hurled backward against the wall, screaming. The knapsack lay open on the floor.

"Nadia!" The shackles pulled taut and knocked Lucca prone. The skin of her palms scraped against the stone floor.

As Lucca struggled upright enough to shuffle forward, Nadia looked up from where she had fallen. "I'm sorry!" she blurted. "I was just—I didn't mean any harm, I wasn't even doing anything!"

Magus ignored her in favor of upending the knapsack and letting the contents clatter over the floor—pens, the gun, screwdrivers, everything, inexplicably, but the notebook—and fixated immediately on the gun. Technology gap or no, it could not be mistaken for anything but a weapon.

With a nasty bark of a laugh, Magus kicked the gun into the farthest corner of the room and gathered something fiercely dark in the palm of his hand. Nadia tried to shrink into the wall as he snapped, "Cretin! Did you intend to challenge me?"

"Don't—" was all Lucca got out before an invisible force jerked Nadia into the air by her neck. Her legs churned and her hands scrabbled at her throat as her startled cry turned to a gasp. Lucca tugged at her to avail. "Put her down!"

Magus tsked and raised his hand, flexing it as if around an invisible throat. Nadia shuddered and choked. "You said that the device is your invention," he said coolly. "This one has no value to me."

"You lay a finger on her and you get _nothing_." _Yeah, threaten him. That'll work._ "Listen, it's my device, but she's the only one who can use her pendant." Perhaps this was true; as long as Lucca thought of it as true, she might avoid unconscious cues of desperation. "We can't get anywhere without that."

His hand remained tensed. "And where are 'we' attempting to get?"

Gamblers blew on their dice for luck; Lucca had to settle for a steadying breath. "I can open doors in time. You know how to pull things across space. Give me access to your research and a place to work, and I can get you Schala."

Magus's hand twitched. Nadia sucked in air in loud, frantic gulps, but she was still suspended, still kicking and clawing at nothing.

"Lavos, too," Lucca added. "Why fight the version that destroyed Zeal when I could get you the one that just burrowed into the planet?"

Nadia hit the floor like a fumbled marionette, coughing and wheezing. Lucca nearly tripped again trying to kneel at her side. "Okay" wove a web between them.

Magus snapped his fingers with a leathery thump, and the gun rose into the air, rotating slowly. "The two of you were foolish enough to come here alone and pitifully armed," he said, with what might have been bravado or genuine discernment of how lethal the weapon wasn't. "If you meant to retrieve your device, you have failed utterly. Why should I consider you competent?"

With Nadia's hand squeezing hers, Lucca tilted her head at the cockiest angle she could manage while kneeling. _I created a Red Gate. I built robots. I am Lucca the Great, and sometimes my brilliant schemes actually work._ "Well, we're inside an impenetrable fortress talking to the really hard-to-reach guy in charge. That's not just competent; that's pretty damn brilliant."

The gun hit the floor as Magus stared at her. His lip curled back from his teeth in what began as a snarl but twisted sharply into a laugh.

Nadia's fingers dug in hard, and Lucca used her elbow to indicate that now was not the time to discuss which plan had been the back-up.

"And what," said Magus, "did you hope to gain from this? You have discovered more of my history than I will allow to be known; surely you're not stupid enough to expect to leave here alive."

Did he believe she'd intentionally lost the Gate Key, too, as part of some elaborate gambit? _Well, I'm overdue for luck._ Aloud Lucca replied, "We've been to the future. We want to get rid of Lavos as much as you do."

Magus sneered. "You pathetic children expect to destroy the bane of Zeal?"

"Hey, we're not the ones trying to fight it head-on." Lucca failed to keep the defensiveness out of her tone. "And that's not the point. The point is that you can't destroy it alone any more than we can."

There was a long pause, during which Lucca tried to look more like the sort of person who'd helped bring down a planet-destroying alien and less like the sort of person who was in fetters on the floor.

"Give me the pendant," said Magus.

Lucca was in the middle of "You won't be able to use it" when Nadia reached behind her neck to open the clasp. A band of bruises was already forming around her throat. Biting her tongue, Lucca watched the pendant float up into Magus's hand.

He turned it over slowly, scowling, pressing his thumb against the stone as if he hoped it would crack. "It's empty."

"It's still a conduit." Lucca weighed her details carefully: "You don't need Lavos's energy to open a hole in time."

"But you do, of course, require magic." Magus flicked his hand as if he had been holding something prickly, and the pendant drifted back down to hover in front of Nadia. She watched it warily before fastening it back in place with unsteady hands.

"Right," said Lucca, once it became apparent that the pendant was not going to attack. "So if you want to find your sister, you should start by giving me that back."

Magus's lip curled. "Do you think me a fool? You will use your powers solely for my purposes and at my discretion."

_We'll see about that._Lucca wrestled the gloating out of her tone before saying, "And when will that be?"

"I have preparations to make. You will begin your work tomorrow, on my orders." And this, apparently, concluded the interrogation; Magus floated back down, summoned the knapsack and its scattered contents, and strode past them to the exit.

When it became clear that the fetters would not be magicked away, Lucca rose with the help of Nadia and the wall. The knapsack she let go, reluctant to provoke Magus unnecessarily or face questions about what she hoped to find inside it. She had pens enough in her pockets and little need for screwdrivers in an era before standard screw sizes, and the best she could hope for was that the notebook hadn't fallen out somewhere a Mystic was likely to find it. She couldn't force herself to hope that it had burned.

_Everything burns except Sandorino._

Scampering noises greeted them as the door opened. Magus tsked dismissively at the green scalp of an imp as it disappeared around a bend in the hall: "He wastes his time."

On the one hand, a Magus with generals who hadn't yet stopped jockeying for his position was a distracted Magus; on the other, heavier hand, generals who hadn't entirely accepted Magus as their supreme commander were generals more likely to sneak around the edges of his commands. Even Ozzie could be dangerous.

"It's hard to walk in these," Lucca said, hobbling through the doorway. Magus ignored her. "Seriously, do you think we're going to try to run off?"

"Be silent," he snapped.

Ten yards down the hall, when a steep spiral staircase slowed progress almost to a halt, the shackles fell off after a leathery snap. Lucca climbed easily with Nadia behind her, trying to make sense of the castle's architecture. By now, she thought, they had to be very near the top. All she remembered about the top was Magus's summoning chamber.

The stairs ended at a ninety-degree bend in a narrow hall; narrow windows in the outer wall suggested that this was a track around the summoning chamber. The end Magus led them to was so dark that Lucca didn't pick out the shape of a door until it swung inward.

The spacious room beyond was lit only the moonlight filtering in through the thick panes of a large window, cut with iron supports and half-hidden by black curtains. This appeared to be where old astronomy experiments went to die; astrolabes and the ancestors of telescopes cluttered multiple desks, along with stacks of parchment. The parchment towers rose from the floor, as well, interspersed with enough assorted bedding to suggest that someone had been in the habit of spending night and day here.

Dust flew as the heavy curtains dragged themselves across the floor. For a moment the room was pitch-black until rows of dusty candelabras flickered to life. Their overlapping lights gleamed from the instruments and scrubbed away every deep shadow.

"Awfully bright in here," said Lucca, on the off-chance of getting an explanation.

"Get used to it," Magus said. "You won't be leaving this tower."

The door slammed behind him, followed by the clink of a lock and the echo of a bolt sliding into place. Lucca held up her hand and counted down, ten beats per finger, as she peered about for any sign of an eavesdropping device. When she folded her thumb on zero, she grabbed Nadia's hand and pulled her between the curtains and the cold glass, where the only light came from the moon. "Keep it down," she whispered. "He might still be spying on us."

Nadia minimally cooperated. "Okay, I've been biting my tongue so hard I'm going to have teeth marks in it forever. What the heck was that all about?"

"Long story. First—"

"Don't you _dare_."

"I'll tell you. Really. Just answer one question first—" she held up a finger against Nadia's bristling— "because it's important. What happened to the Masamune?"

Still frowning, Nadia mirrored Lucca's gesture. "I hid it."

Lucca breathed a little easier. Before she could ask where, Nadia lowered her finger and added, "Your turn."

_Ah, hindsight. Next time I have to tell someone my life story, I'm going to decide it's the pleasant surprises they don't need to know about._ Aloud Lucca whispered, "Remember what I said about Zeal?"

"Yeah, but you never said it had anything to do with _not telling me your secret plan_ or Mr. Big Evil Mystic Warlord who _just tried to kill me_."

"Right." Lucca took off her glasses and rubbed the lenses with the least dirty part of her shirt. "I sort of left some stuff out."

She kept her glasses off as she spoke, because she didn't want to see Nadia's expressions. The interruptions she parried with "Just let me finish."

When she did, Nadia's pent-up objections came out in a rush: "Did everyone just forget that he's evil? What about what he did to Guardia? What about he did to _Frog_?"

Lucca shook her head. "We all knew what he'd done. I think we were all still shell-shocked. Plus it was cold and he was acting stupidly suicidal. And we'd just seen him as a scared little kid who wanted his sister back. The whole thing was really... surreal." She spent a moment tapping her fingers together, then said, "Frog could have killed him, but Frog was better than that. Is better than that. He knew when revenge wasn't worth getting."

Nadia was quiet until Lucca put her glasses back on, whereupon she said, with shaky restraint, "And you didn't tell me this before _why_?"

"Because how was I supposed to explain it?"

"Like you just did."

Lucca sighed. "Look, when I told you everything else, I didn't think this was going to matter. And then Frog was around and I didn't want to hurt him. And then Toma was there, and it was just too complicated, okay?"

Nadia fell silent again, gaze fixed on the wall. "What else haven't you told me?"

"Nothing. I promise." _Yeah, that's real convincing._ "Look, I'd let you read everything if I knew where..."

She trailed off as Nadia reached a hand down her top, fished around her midsection, and pulled up a corner of the notebook in question.

Lucca's questions condensed themselves into "How?"

"You two were really into arguing, so I figured I'd grab anything we didn't want him to see." The flush of pride began to soften Nadia's expression. "I was going to get your gun, too, but that's when he, um, started paying attention again."

"Listen, I'm really, really sorry about that." Lucca fumbled words together, looking away from Nadia's throat: "I thought I could get you to run away before they caught me. Which, you know, maybe I should have thought that through better. And I didn't think to hide it when I should have. And I got used to cranky-but-not-trying-to-kill-you Magus, so maybe I wasn't careful enough. I screwed up. I'm sorry."

Nadia smiled, letting the notebook fall back into her clothes. "Hey, I knew this would be dangerous. Maybe I wasn't careful enough, either."

The tension in the air melted from something that needed to cut with a knife to something better suited to a spoon.

"So," said Nadia, drawing out the word on a long breath. "In the other world, everyone was okay with having the big evil warlock around? I mean, what did you _do_ with him? You told me about all this stuff everyone did together, and I just can't see him making s'mores and singing 'Imps on Parade' around a campfire."

Lucca winced at the mental image. "Well, he didn't really participate when we weren't killing things. He brooded a lot, mostly. Got pissy when Ayla chewed on his hair."

"Seriously?" Nadia didn't quite stifle a giggle. "Ayla must have been awesome."

"You don't know the half of it. I'm surprised you're not benching twice your body weight with a genetic heritage like that."

Looking thoughtful, Nadia hooked her fingers around one of the window's iron supports and provided half a minute of amusing vocalizations before letting go. "Nope."

"I'll give you full points for effort, though," Lucca replied. "Besides, it's not like you have to be able to bend steel with your bare hands or anything. The prison has not been built that can hold Lucca Ashtear." When Nadia didn't look suitably impressed, she added, "No, really. I busted Crono out of jail. Nothing can cage the mighty power of science."

Nadia inclined her head toward the door. "So when are you going to science us up a key?"

"Only if the plan doesn't work. Right now, this is the best place we can be."

"Okay, see, this where you tell me what the secret plan is so that you don't sound crazy."

After a careful scan for any spies floating outside the window, Lucca nodded and motioned for Nadia to lean closer. "We've been trying to get to the problem so far, right?" she whispered. "Because we can't do anything unless we're in the right place at the right time. But if we can make the problem come to us, it doesn't matter when or where we are." Lucca paused to moisten her lips, drop her voice a little lower. "I'm going to pull the splinter out of Sandorino, and I'm going to do it right under Magus's nose."


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Chrono Cross cameo time again! And also time for SCIENCE. Or at least excitingly mangled pseudo-science mashed up with Chronoverse cosmology.
> 
> Also, [Silverword](http://silversword.dreamwidth.org) drew me [awesome fanart of Chapters 4 and 12](http://silversword.dreamwidth.org/1233.html?style=mine). Go see!

It felt like a very long time since Lucca had woken up surrounded by papers. For a moment her brain supplied flickering expectations of frying bacon, a half-completed invention on her desk, and a scolding from her mother, who might or might not have had walked in to deliver it—but there was nothing familiar here but the ache in her neck and the need to fumble for her glasses.

The candles hadn't gone out the night before, no matter how creatively she and Nadia tried to snuff them, and now they appeared no shorter. Cold seeped up from the floor through the bedding. Nadia was still curled up snug against her back, snoring.

Deciding that any impending negotiations with Magus would better be conducted while not huddling in a mound of blankets, Lucca wriggled carefully free of Nadia and the bedding. Nadia shivered but did not stir.

The floor sent a frigid shock through Lucca's bare foot. After putting her boots on, she went to peek around the curtain, where the darkness of the sky made her frown. The moon and stars were gone; apparently Magus cloaked his lair in thick clouds by day, no doubt because sunshine ruined the evil ambiance. She pressed her cheek to the cold glass for a better view of the cloud coverage.

The slam of the deadbolt startled her into knocking her head against one of the iron supports. Lucca cursed under her breath as she darted out from behind the curtain, nearly tripping over the fabric. The blanket-mound made various noises of disoriented alarm.

Lucca managed to don her helmet, almost not askew, before the door opened on Magus. The shadows under his eyes suggested that he had foregone sleep, most likely in favor of pressing various combinations of buttons on the Gate Key. _Rest advantage: Lucca._

His silent looming was obviously meant to intimidate, so Lucca put her hand on her hip and said, "What, you didn't bring breakfast?"

"You'll eat when you've demonstrated that you're not an utter waste of resources." Magus turned back to the hall before adding, "Follow me. The other one will remain here."

Lucca straightened her helmet before starting toward the door. Nadia reached out of the blanket cocoon to catch her tunic and whisper, "Be careful."

"You too." Lucca brushed her hand briefly against Nadia's before continuing on. The door slammed and locked behind her.

* * *

Once upon a time, ten years later, Lucca had taken it for granted that the summoning chamber was the highest room in Magus's tower; now she passed through a hidden passage in the back wall, crossed a short hall lit blindingly bright, and ascended a tightly spiraling staircase that rose far above the range of that light. Twice she nearly tripped against Magus when her feet misjudged a step.

The steps ended without warning, sending her flailing in the dark for a handhold. She caught a handful of fabric on her way to finding a wall.

After a silence that oozed irritation, Magus snapped his fingers.

Rumbling jerked Lucca's gaze upward. Daylight sliced in through a rapidly widening gap in the roof until she stared, squinting, into the cloudless sky, broken only by the hind talons of the castle's massive gargoyle.

"This is the Orrery," Magus said with audible capitalization, drawing her attention back down. Lucca suppressed a gasp; the light glinted from orbs of varying sizes and metals, attached by curved rods to a sphere that dwarfed the rest and glittered gold. The construction filled most of the floor, leaving a narrow periphery and an empty area near the stairwell, which housed several smaller devices, along with stacks of books, scrolls, and parchment. A stilled pendulum accessorized with levers and paper put her in mind of a seismograph, and a large, finely detailed globe looked to made of something that mimicked the red sheen of Dreamstone.

Lucca approached the orb nearest her and farthest from the center of the Orrery. Lead, if she had to guess. Past it, three smaller orbs appeared to be made of tin, iron, and copper.

Magus cleared his throat. "Do you understand the purpose of this?"

"Well, if you want to summon something across space, you have to be pretty precise with your locations. Given the technology around now, you can't get much more reliable than astronomy." With a glance at the possibly-a-seismograph, she added, "And you're worried about earthquakes."

His laugh pulled his lips back from his teeth. "You will not leave this room until you can explain the function of the Orrery. Surely this won't prove a challenge to one of your purported abilities."

"I'll have it all figured out before lunch-ch-ch." The last sound tripped back and forth on Lucca's tongue as her magic woke and tingled under her skin. When she had caught her breath, she said, "Well, it's about time."

"Your magic will be unlocked here, and here only. Attempt to descend the stairs, and the walls will crush you."

"Because that's really necessary. Didn't I tell you I _want_ to be here?"

Shrugging, Magus levitated higher to sit, legs crossed, as if on an invisible perch. His feigned interest in his gloves indicated that the conversation was over.

_If I ever get the chance to do it all over again, I'm pushing your cranky ass off that cliff._ With an annoyed sigh, Lucca settled in by the stack of reading material and skimmed the top layer of parchment. Mostly star charts and maps, she noted, mixed in with semi-coherent babble that reminded her of Belthasar's notes in illuminated manuscript form.

Her heart raced at "WHO CONTROLS TIME?" scribbled beneath a drawing of a enormous tree, but everything else on the page was a different handwriting's nonsense about astrology.

When she found a fanciful illustration of the heavens with a convoluted path drawn from a leaden outer planet to a golden sun, she wrinkled her nose and said aloud, "Alchemy? _Seriously_?"

"Power is power," Magus replied flatly. "Magic isn't particular."

"Chemistry sure is. At least that explains all the metals." Lucca abandoned the reading material in favor of exploring the Orrery, which at least was real. When she followed the variously colored rods inward to the large golden sphere, she discovered that it in turn was linked by a thick glass rod to an almost Dreamstone-red orb sitting atop exposed clockwork. She stared at it all for several moments before sputtering, "_Geo_centric? _Weird_ geocentric?"

Magus's voice achieved crisp paper flatness. "Alchemy requires compromise."

_Magic couldn't be_ less _particular._ With a weary sigh, Lucca bent down and examined the clockwork base. A moment's fumbling found the winding mechanism, and she watched with satisfaction as the gears began to turn. The rods shuddered as dimness descended in a canopy over the Orrery, then was peppered with thousands of miniature points of light. She stared up at them until she had to hasten out of the way of the speeding sun.

Once she had navigated her way safely clear of the solar system, Lucca caught her breath and watched it spin and loop beneath a field of flitting stars until everything slowed to an almost imperceptible speed. "Okay," she said, speaking her thoughts into order. "So it's apparent motion, not real orbits. And it's magic clockwork, so it syncs up with what the sky looks like right now. Handy."

A scratching sound behind her alerted her to motion of the pendulum, swinging steady as one of its attachments drew a straight line over the paper beneath it.

"I'm guessing that means I'm not about to accidentally pull Lavos out of my hat." If Nadia had been there, she would have bantered; all Lucca got was unamused silence. She tried not to worry about Nadia as she turned her attention to the globe.

Like the Orrery, it played fast and loose with scale; Guardia Castle was visible down to its tiny towers, and Magus's castle was roughly the height of the Denadoro Mountains, no doubt to allow for intricate details. With a sufficiently powerful magnifying glass, she wondered if she would see a tiny Orrery on the top of the tower, perhaps with a tiny Lucca scowling at it. She tried not to look at the miniature roofs and treetops that marked Sandorino.

Somehow this surely connected to the pendulum and the Orrery, despite the lack of any physical ties. After a moment's consideration, she pulled a thin line of fire from her palm and arced it into the Orrery's red heart.

For an instant it shone bright enough to half-blind her, but the brilliance quickly focused into a pinpoint beam that, in gleeful defiance of physics, bent around the planets before striking the globe in the middle of an ocean. Lucca blinked, scowled at the impossible light, and peered at the place it struck. Nothing important, as far as she could tell, though she had the sense that Magus was watching her with interest.

_No guts, no glory._ Forcing her hands steady, Lucca adjusted the globe until the pinpoint of light fell roughly on the location of the Gate north of Truce. The seismograph scratched a pattern like an erratic heartbeat.

The light bulb clicked on: "It's measuring energy. The kind that rips holes in time."

Magus made a noise of dry amusement. "The word you're fumbling for is 'thaumatograph.'"

"Am not. That's not even a word." Frowning, Lucca shifted the globe to illuminate her own location and watched the thaumatograph wobble frantically, threatening to fly loose. She looked up at Magus and added, "You built this first, or at least some version of it. Then you built your castle on top of Lavos."

He tugged idly at his glove. "Fortunate that the damned thing didn't burrow under a strategically inconvenient area, isn't it?"

_Lucky it's not under Guardia Castle, or you'd actually be trying to win this war._ Lucca tapped the globe, careful not to put her finger too near the beam. "So now you have to calculate its position underground. That's the hard part, right?"

"Difficult, but hardly insurmountable. Transporting something of its size is another matter."

Hence the vast summoning chamber beneath. Lucca wondered how it connected to the devices on the roof; perhaps he intended to lug everything downstairs, perhaps the floor opened like the ceiling to let the summoned object fall, or perhaps the same magic that bent light around obstacles redirected matter, as well, through tiny gaps in the floor. Her early plans for the Telepod had involved a barrier to impress the audience, but open space guaranteed a much lower rate of exploded test fruits.

"And time just has you stumped." Lucca feigned casual curiosity: "So the actual summoning part—"

"Is alchemical, and therefore beyond your interests and comprehension." Magus straightened his legs and drifted back to just above the floor. "Time is your affair. I expect to see some measure of progress when I return to escort you back to your cell."

"What about," Lucca began, but the door to the stairs had already slammed behind him before she finished, "lunch?"

Only the tick of clockwork and the scratching of the thaumatograph broke the silence.

"Bastard," she muttered, tilting the globe to a quieter place before sitting down amid the reading material. She opened the book with the most occult-looking cover, fished a pen from her pocket, and prepared to take notes on a blank piece of parchment.

After some consideration, she set the pen down and spent a few minutes juggling fireballs, just because she could.

* * *

By the time the shadows lengthened, Lucca was beginning to suspect that alchemy was a grand practical joke carried out by dotty old men with entirely too much time on their hands. So far she'd learned that the color and metal scheme of the Orrery had a definite purpose behind it, though the purpose seemed to be playing along with people who thought that lead would turn into gold if enough fanciful verbiage was thrown at it.

They also took the special nonsense of magic—fire, water, lightning, and shadow—and inexplicably added salt, which Lucca's experience in being hit with spells suggested was not a secret fifth element. She scribbled a frowny face over the cubes she'd been doodling on her notes and went over to poke at the Orrery, which at least was reassuringly physical.

A little fumbling turned up a series of cranks underneath the Earth, the largest of which which reversed or accelerated the motions of the heavens, depending on which direction and how quickly she turned it. It also required her to lie flat on her stomach to avoid the rods whizzing by, which she counted as a serious design flaw. _This needs a nice chronometer hooked up to it. Give me wire and gears, and magic instead of electricity..._

An hour later she had sketched out plans for a crude variation on the Time Gyro she had once copied from Robo (whom she couldn't think about now, not without admitting that she remembered him like a character in a book). On a fresh sheet of parchment she listed the materials and tools she lacked. This, she decided, would be enough to earn dinner.

She settled back by the cranks with an astrolabe and a set of charts to do preliminary calibration work. Smaller cranks effected smaller motions, down to the tiniest that only seemed to control the rotation of Earth's tiny silver moon. This was the only satellite represented, fastened to its planet by a thin white rod. Other planets' moons apparently did not interest alchemists.

A lever reset the Orrery to the present when she pulled it. Lucca got up and adjusted the globe so that the beam of light struck the Gate north of Truce, sending the thaumatograph into a state of mild agitation.

She turned the cranks carefully this time, with a rough idea of what constituted a year. As she wound the heavens backward toward a guess at when Magus had dropped out of Zeal and into the Mystics' lap, the pendulum shuddered, slowed, and stilled.

_Well, then._ If the Orrery understood time as a variable, it failed to pass this on to the rest of the equipment. Perhaps Magus had constructed the Orrery when he still hoped to find a way back to Zeal, before he poured all his efforts into getting revenge against Lavos, and the mechanical overrides were relics of his failure. Whatever his reasons, only half his creation could look beyond the immediate moment.

Something clanged in the direction of the door. Lucca instinctively hit the reset lever, sending the heavens whirling forward while the Earth remained still.

After a dull snap, the beam of light vanished along with the starscape. "Have you accomplished anything?" asked Magus, in a voice that tried too hard for bored disdain.

"Plenty." Lucca extricated herself from the Orrery and pushed her notes aside with all the casualness she could muster. She approached Magus with her list held out: "I need these to build a chronometer. I don't care what alchemy wants it to be made of, as long as it's not salt."

He studied it with narrowed eyes. "And how does this fit into the grander scheme of pulling objects through time?"

"As step one." When his glare focused on Lucca, she added, "What, did you really think I was going to set you up for the whole 'You're of no further use to me, mwa ha ha, now die' thing?"

With an annoyed gesture, he locked her magic away. Lucca scarcely managed not to shiver.

She followed him down the stairs, which did not attempt to eat her, and back to her room in disagreeable silence. With any luck, he would be too busy keeping his Mystic army under control to go digging through the notes she'd stashed by the Orrery; nothing would necessarily give away that she was devoting more time to figuring out his summoning alchemy than she was to adapting his invention to search across time, but this would not be a difficult intuitive leap.

_So I'd better hurry up and prove I'm the greater genius._

The door slammed so close behind Lucca that it nearly caught her tunic. She opened her mouth to complain about that and the lack of food in her life, but she found herself interrupted by a lung-compressing hug from Nadia.

"I'm okay," Lucca squeaked. "Air."

"Sorry! I've been worried." Nadia backed away a few inches, setting her hands on Lucca's arms. "Are you hungry? We've got bread and, uh, stuff. I'm pretending it's potatoes."

Lucca nodded, then found her line of thought frayed when she caught sight of Nadia's hands. Her palms were a sore shade of red, and scratches ran along her index fingers and thumbs. "Your hands—"

Nadia pulled them back with a sheepish shrug. "I'm fine. I just got bored and messed around with some of the stuff in here. Food?"

Making a note to push the issue later, Lucca followed her to one of the desks, which had been cleared of enough clutter to make space for tin cups and a wooden tray. The latter was piled with crusty bread and a pale blob that muddled the normally stark line between meat and vegetable.

"What is—"

"Mashed potatoes."

"I'm pretty sure—"

"_Mashed potatoes_."

It didn't taste anything like potatoes, but Lucca didn't see any benefit to figuring out what it did taste like. She scooped up globs of it with hunks of bread and ate quickly to minimize the flavors' time on her tongue, then washed it down with faintly metallic water.

"So how's it going?" Nadia asked as Lucca wound down to crumbs and hiccups. "Do you have awesome magic machines from Zeal and stuff?"

"I wish." Lucca raised her glasses and rubbed the headache focusing itself between her eyes. "I've got alchemy."

"What's that?"

"It's like if science had a creepy uncle. It's stupid, it doesn't make sense, and the worst part is that it seems to work."

Nadia patted her arm. "Lucca, you're a super-genius. You'll figure it out."

"I just hope I can figure it out before Magus gets impatient." Lucca took another sip of water, then headed for the darkness of the curtains and gestured for Nadia to follow. Once they were sheltered from the light, she whispered, "We're telling each other things now, right? What were you really doing today?"

After a moment's hesitation, Nadia addressed a dust bunny: "If I tell you, you'll tell me not to."

"And you don't think that means you shouldn't do it?"

"I have to." Nadia met Lucca's eyes. "It's important. Trust me?"

An argument fell apart in Lucca's head before it found the words to carry it outside. "Just promise you'll stay safe."

"As long as you do."

_That's driving a hard bargain._ "Doing my best," she replied. Outside the window, black streaks of clouds sliced through the stars. She rested her hand on the glass and felt the warmth seep out of her skin.

Nadia's fingers curled over hers. "Do you think Frog's still okay?"

"Probably. But sooner or later he's going to find a way to come after us."

"Then we've both gotta keep going. For Frog and Toma and everyone else. For Crono and Robo and the whole world." Nadia spoiled an exemplary set jaw with a stifled yawn. "And we can't keep going if we don't sleep."

If Lucca was tired, her body was doing a half-hearted job of communicating this to her brain. "You go ahead," she said, watching the stars appear motionless in the sky. A passing bat blotted out handfuls with each flap of its wings. "I'll be there in a few minutes."

Long after Nadia began to snore gently, Lucca hunched over one of the desks, annotating a scribbled drawing of the Orrery. Beneath her, the earth spun through space without her notice, unlike the motionless heart of the device.

Apparent motions, not actual ones; perception, not reality. And the worst part was that it _worked_. She turned to a fresh page in her notebook and scrawled out her thoughts in words and diagrams.

* * *

A few minutes spread themselves thin enough to reach all the way to dawn. Lucca blearily eyed the pale gray stripe between the curtains, then shook Nadia gently awake.

"I need to borrow your pendant today," she said. "I've got an idea."

Nadia frowned as she reached back to unfasten the clasp. "You didn't sleep."

"Couldn't." The pendant went deep in Lucca's pocket, where her tunic's folds disguised any hint of a bulge. She hopped in place to make sure it wouldn't clink. "Is Magus going to notice you're not wearing this?"

"Magus doesn't even look at me. And you can't just stop sleeping."

"I could if I had enough coffee." When this failed to soften Nadia's expression, she added, "If this works, I'll sleep all night tonight. Promise."

"You'd better sleep all night no matter what."

Lucca made a non-committal motion that wasn't quite a nod. A critical glance around the room offered no hint as to what dangerous activity Nadia might be up to, but Lucca ruled out building bombs. A contingency escape plan didn't seem likely, either; even if Nadia could scratch her way through a solid wall, she didn't have nearly enough bedsheets to reach the ground.

The deadbolt slammed open. "Stay safe," Lucca whispered, and heard the sentiment echoed before Magus came to take her away.

* * *

Alchemy didn't care what the chronometer was made of, apparently, because an especially curt Magus left her with a variety pack of scrap and tools. A box stuffed with tiny gears suggested that Magus had either robbed a clockmaker or harbored secret ambitions of being one.

Even after a handful of exhaustion-fueled errors, Lucca had an ugly-but-functional chronometer hooked up to the Orrery in only a few hours. A little calibration, and she was confident that the numbers displayed over a series of clock faces reflected the year, day, and hour set by the levers. She steered the stars to Crono's birthdate as recorded in her notebook, then let the Orrery spin back to her, without him.

That was the easy part.

Magus had seemed especially distracted and curt when he escorted her upstairs; Lucca suspected she had plenty of time, at least, to attempt the hard part.

A jolt of fire magic woke the light of the Orrery's heart and sent it dodging between planets to strike the red globe. The beam was still aimed at the site of the Gate north of Truce; the thaumatograph stirred.

Just to be sure, Lucca sent the Orrery back ten years in time. As soon as it clicked out of the present moment, the thaumatograph stilled.

_Okay. Striking fake Dreamstone doesn't work. But the real stuff..._

The thought hesitated at the fork of "will somehow fix everything" and "will leave behind a smoking crater to rival Lavos's impact," so Lucca assumed a middle ground and approached the globe with caution. The pendant in her palm glittered under the sunlight spilling in overhead. Keeping her body as far away as her reach allowed, she held the pendant by the chain and lowered it, flush with the globe, into the beam of light.

The pendant guzzled the light and blazed like lightning in a jar. But it didn't explode, melt, or smoke, so Lucca held it steady. The gathering light swirled faster and brighter inside the pendant until it overflowed in strands that covered the globe like spiderwebs. These calmed into a gently glowing gossamer web.

"Huh," said Lucca. She half-expected her breath to disturb the web, but it didn't so much as flicker. The thaumatograph ran wild.

All strands began at the pendant and ended either in lonely spots on the globe or struck together in shining nodes. The brightest, thickest strands connected the pendant's position over the Gate to the location of Magus's castle, while fainter strands led elsewhere: the Denadoro Mountains, the Zenan Bridge, the old cathedral near the castle. The lines dimmed at varying rates as they arced farther from the pendant.

After a few seconds' deliberation, Lucca poked one of the bold strands striking Magus's lair and watched it go dark past the point of contact. Strands branching from the node it had been connected to winked out. For a bewildering moment, she felt a swell of protective affection.

The feeling passed when Lucca let the pendant slip out of the beam, dissipating the web. In the silence, her heavy breaths echoed in her ears.

As she assembled bits of scrap into a tripod to hold the pendant, she tried to build a theory out of what little she had to work with. Dreamstone solved the trouble of looking through time, obviously; so much light connecting the Gate to Magus's lair could only be related to the history-quaking event of Zeal's lost prince falling through time and landing in Ozzie's lap. And the web seemed to be a web of influence—bright and thick for immediate cause and effect, pale and thin for the butterflies who brought the storms.

Why touch triggered the echo of an emotion wasn't a question Lucca wished to pursue yet.

Once she had all three legs near enough to equal, she propped the pendant atop her makeshift tripod and cast a web over the world again. When she cranked the Orrery forward in time, she watched the strands dim as new paths gained light, either appearing for the first time or finally growing bright enough to be visible. As the Orrery's time caught up to the outside world's, a lightning-bright slab of a line led from Denadoro to Sandorino to the castle, leaving behind something sparkling in the mountains.

A dance around the edge of paradox blazed like fire; when Lucca adjusted the Orrery's focus to Fiona's growing forest, she found strands knotted into a conflagration, out of touch with the rest of the web except for a fat stripe arcing from the site where Lavos burrowed into the earth. Turning back time to Lavos's fall earned her sore arms and a planet washed in white.

After a long frown at the globe, Lucca picked up her notebook and began a fresh page with "Unhelpful Discovery: Everything is Lavos's fault." On second thought, she made "Discovery" plural and added under it, "I'm making a huge mess."

As the Orrery reset itself to the present, she optimistically created a column for "Helpful Discoveries." If she got one solid line from Sandorino to Truce, she would have something to pick apart. Something to find a way to pinpoint. Something to summon, as she soon as she figured out how to rip open the space-time continuum between herself and it.

_Details, details_. Lucca took a deep breath and guided the Orrery ahead to the summer of 758 AD, from which she crept ahead day by day until the globe's web blazed wildly around the pendant.

Her heart leapt into her throat and fluttered under her tongue. Thick ribbons burned between Sandorino, the forest, the site of Lavos's impact, and Truce. Crono was important; time froze for him, as it would have frozen for any of those who rampaged through time to the planet's rescue. Tilt the world at a different angle, and it was Marle hatching from an eclipse, or Lucca coughing at the sudden shock of frigid air.

When she poked the light arcing from Sandorino to Truce, a horrible alien keen exploded inside her head.

She could no longer remember hearing Lavos's cries, but the sound shook her from the inside out and bathed her in a cold sweat of certainty. With unsteady hands, she picked up her pen and underlined "Everything is Lavos's fault."

* * *

The sky above purpled with dusk, and Lucca came no nearer to finding a connection from Sandorino that didn't scream of Lavos. After 758, even the faintest light from the town carried its echo. _Geez, get mixed up with one alien parasite, and history doesn't care about your old ladies with orphans._

Assuming Lavos didn't have a secret origin in an eighth-century mishap, there had to be some reason its influence radiated from the day of the fire. Perhaps Lucca's Red Gate had sucked in a fragment of it from another plane; perhaps Lavos's spawn had hatched from Ozzie's corpse.

Perhaps Lucca's speculation had already gone too far afield. Whatever the case, the noisy interference turned a quest for a needle in a haystack into a quest for a needle in a haystack that Lavos was sitting on.

She doodled on her notes, poked at the same screaming strands of light, and tipped her head back to watch stars wink into the darkening sky. Magus was late, probably just to keep her hungry and on edge.

Worrying about Nadia would accomplish nothing.

Lucca settled in on the floor to form a triangle with the globe and the Orrery, notes and texts spread around her. There had to be some way to magnify the web created by the pendant, or some way to filter out unwanted historical influences.

If Nadia hadn't been locked away elsewhere, potentially getting herself in lethal trouble, she could have offered encouragement and a sounding board. Most likely she would have latched on to the idea that Lavos was Renaldo and bantered appropriately, and somehow Lucca might have come away with the kernel of an idea.

Trying to banter with the wall only depressed her, so Lucca resigned herself to trying to tease sense out of an alchemical treatise written by someone with unnecessarily curly handwriting.

Over the ticking of the Orrery's clockwork came a hum. She dismissed it as the drone of electricity, then recalled that she now predated electrical generators by a few centuries. The hum grew louder, lilting and insouciant, as the shadows in the corner bent around a splinter-thin slip of a girl. She looked human, but so did several species of Mystic.

Rising into a crouch, Lucca readied fire under her palms.

The girl sauntered into the light, her blond plait swishing over her nape, and inclined her head at the Orrery. "This's pretty. Didja make it yerself?"

A glance at the door confirmed that it remained closed. The ceiling was open, but Magus obviously considered that route secure. Frowning, Lucca pinched her leg and found the results inconclusive.

"Oh, yer dreamin', all right." Despite the night's chill and an outfit that suggested she taken a tropical vacation with a frisky pair of scissors, the girl showed no signs of discomfort, and her exposed limbs were free of gooseflesh. She rested her elbows on the globe and her chin in her gloved palm. Where she touched the web, it did not break.

Work completed during a dream counted for nothing. Lucca let her spell dissipate and asked, "What are you?"

"A fragment o' somethin' lost, maybe," the girl replied, her attention focused on the glittering Orrery. At Lucca's impatient cough, she made eye contact and added, "Or maybe I'm just what ya get for goin' without a wink o' sleep. You still tryin' to live on coffee and instant noodles?"

"Noodles aren't instant yet." Something else had been wrong. "Do I know you?"

"Nah. Ya ain't really _mine_, see."

Bracing herself for further nonsense, Lucca pushed her glasses up and rubbed at her eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Bugger if I know." The girl shifted her weight and knocked the world askew. "Don't go askin' for me name, either, 'cause that's a mite tricky right now."

_So are you something I forgot, or something I broke?_ The question gave too much credit to what was probably just evidence of ergot in the bread. Making a mental note to check the alignment of the globe later, Lucca folded her legs beneath her and frowned at the girl, who drummed her fingers on a forest and stubbornly refused to disappear.

"We got things in common, you and me." The girl smiled with what could have been sympathy or smugness, then straightened up and wandered over to the Orrery, where she passed planets and sun to reach the faux-Dreamstone Earth. She rose up on the balls of her feet to peer at the little silver orb attached to it. "Must be weird," she said, "only ever havin' the one."

The hourglass of Lucca's tolerance chafed under the rapid flow of sand. "I really don't need any extra crazy in here. What the hell do you want?"

"Heh." The girl turned and arched an eyebrow. "Guess it took a whole pack o' kids to make ya patient. I ain't even real here, ya know. We're just two dreams crossin' like daggers in the dark."

"Uh-huh. I'm waking up now." Lucca pinched her thigh again and frowned when the world did not dissolve.

A look of second-hand urgency passed over the girl's face. "Oi, not yet! Listen. Once you walk down a path, it's a path. Nothin' ya do can make it stop bein' one." She ran her finger over the little moon and sent it spinning through a score of phases. "Ignore it and let the weeds eat it up, but ya can't ever unwalk it."

When Lucca declined to comment, the girl slipped out of the Orrery's workings and tugged at her own earlobes. "Oi, mate, _listen_! You can put yer cobblestones down and pave a new road around it, but it goes on bein' a path. It ain't in the ground, see. It's in yer feet."

Tinny, high-pitched sounds intruded on Lucca's consciousness. She flashed unpleasantly back on her parents' efforts to involve her in a children's marching band.

"You need a few windows up here, mate," said the girl, turning to face the western wall. "How else can you know what yer missin'?"

"Shh." Not a marching band, exactly—the notes sounded more like the product of an antique music box wound for the first time in a century. The melody rang maddeningly familiar, echoing in the depths of a memory hole. Lucca stood and cocked her head. "Do you hear that?"

Something collided with her helmet with enough force to make her teeth chatter. With a startled curse, Lucca whirled around to watch a wooden jack-in-the-box hit the floor beside her. On impact, the music cut off mid-note, and the top popped open to reveal a live frog, its legs tethered to the box by a pair of springs.

The girl whistled. "Yer brain's bloody _weird_, ya know that?"

The same sequence of notes began anew, now chiming brighter and clearer, and Lucca sidestepped just in time to avoid another falling jack-in-the-box. This one was made of ceramic and shattered against the floor, releasing a faded photograph of a dead tree.

_I'm never sleeping again._ A black rubber box landed at her feet and bounced twice before spitting out an assortment of tiny bones, strung together on silver wire.

As the boxes rained down faster, crashing against the Orrery and blotting out all other sounds, Lucca grabbed a sturdy book and dove for cover in the corner. The girl remained near the wall, untouched.

From beneath her makeshift shield, Lucca shouted, "Are you doing this?"

"Pointin' that finger the wrong way, mate." A cardboard box burst open not far from the girl and scattered diamonds over her shoes. Eyes glinting, she stooped to pick up a handful, then scowled and let them fall through her fingers. "Tch. Glass."

Something rebounded from Lucca's book and quacked. "So how do I make it stop?"

"No, no, ya got it all wrong again. _Listen_." The girl stamped her foot, crushing diamonds to dust. "I ain't yers. Whaddya think that _means_?"

_It means that it hurt a little when I pinched myself. It means that half the time I think I'm dreaming awake. It means that I'm lost here._ Lucca winced as something especially heavy struck the book, then took a deep breath and struggled to project over the din: "It's not just my dream!"

A dissonantly gentle smile spread over the girl's face. "She's always dreaming."

A thick splat came from atop the book, and Lucca recoiled as something red oozed over the edge and onto her cheek.

She woke in a puddle of drool, her cheek imprinted with the pattern of the stone floor. The room was silent save for the mechanical pulse of the Orrery's clockwork and the steady swing of the thaumatograph's pendulum.

She knocked the globe out of alignment herself when she went to check it, and she hated that she couldn't fully absolve herself of intent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haaa, remind me never to put any bullet point as enormously vague as "Invent Chronoverse alchemy" in an outline _ever again_.


End file.
